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HOLT
North Carolina State Library
Raleigh
n. a
Doc.
VAVOULIS
HODGES
OETTINGER
WAYNICK
Hk
HERBERT
CHAIRMAN'S
COMMENTS
Henry E. Kendall
Chairman
N. C. Employment
Security Commission
KENDALL
None of us are so wise that we cannot gain know-ledge
from others. In any period of a year, em-ployees
of the Employment Security Commission
have the opportunity and good fortune to listen to
people who are authorities in their professions, and
also to individuals dignified by years of public
service.
We have published in this edition of the ESC
Quarterly a number of major addresses given to
Commission employees at meetings of the North
Carolina chapter of the International Association of
Personnel in Employment Security, an organization
of perhaps 800 members. Abbreviated as IAPES, the
international group lists members from all states
and several foreign countries, and members are
persons engaged in public employment service work
and unemployment insurance activities.
Luther Hodges, Jr., the impressive young official
of the North Carolina Bank and chairman of the
N. C. Manpower Development Corporation, was
keynote speaker of a 1970 IAPES function and his
remarks, which display considerable insight into
the needs of the impoverished, begin a series of
reprints of speeches we consider noteworthy.
If we excluded from this edition the remarks
made by the venerable Capus Waynick and his
former co-worker May Thompson Evans, we would
be remiss, because these two public servants were
the initial directors of the State Employment Serv-ice
when it began in the mid-thirties, and both
temper their speeches, printed on pages 12 and 14,
with reminiscence.
Statesman, diplomat, politician and legislator,
Capus Waynick left his retirement home in High
Point for a day's visit in Chapel Hill to speak before
the IAPES annual two-day institute held at the
Institute of Government, and Mrs. Evans journeyed
from Washington, D. C, to make her appearance.
Also included in this edition of the Quarterly are
speeches by two men who have no association with
the State Employment Service, but they are expert
in their field, which is journalism, and we have
printed speeches they made before the first and
rather unique seminar for state and local govern-ment
public information officers. They spoke on
"management of government news."
Elmer Oettinger, editor, playwright, holder of
four degres including a PhD in English, gives his
views on news management on page 17. Accom-panying
his article is an address by diminutive
Pete Ivey, longtime newsman and Director of the
University of North Carolina News Bureau.
ESC QUARTERLY
TH E
ESC QUARTERLY
Volume 26, No. 3-4, 1969
Issued at Raleigh, N. C, by the
EMPLOYMENT SECURITY COMMISSION
OF NORTH CAROLINA
Commissioners
Billy Earl Andrews, Durham; Charles L. Hunley,
Monroe; James W. Seabrook, Fayetteville; Henry
E. Kendall, Raleigh; Harold F. Coffey, Lenoir; R.
Dave Hall, Belmont; Samuel F. Teague, Raleigh.
State Advisory Council
Public representatives: Sherwood Roberson, Ro-bersonville;
Mrs. W. Arthur Tripp, Greenville.
Employer representatives: Mrs. M. Edmund Ay-cock,
Raleigh; Joseph D. Ross, Jr., Asheboro;
G. Maurice Hill, Drexel. Employee representa-tives:
Melvin Ward, Spencer, AFL, and H. D.
Lisk, Charlotte, CIO.
HENRY E. KENDALL Chairman
R. FULLER MARTIN _ Director
Unemployment Insurance Division
ALDEN P. HONEYCUTT Director
State Employment Service Division
H. E. (Ted) DAVIS Editor
Public Information Officer
Sent free upon request to responsible individuals,
agencies, organizations and libraries
Address: E.S.C. Information Service,
P. 0. Box 5S9, Raleigh, N. C.
The Employment
Security Commis-sion
administers
two major State
programs — Un-employment
In-surance
and the
State Employ
ment Service. The
Employment Ser-vice
provides ex-pense
free job
placement to ap-plicants
through 60 local offices of the Commission.
Unemployment insurance covers approximately
1,600,000 workers in North Carolina, providing them
with benefit payments in case of involuntary unem-ployment.
The Unemployment Insurance program is
supported by payroll taxes contributed by approxi
mately 43,000 Tarheel employing companies, firm!:
and corporations. The Commission has operatec
since the mid '30's when it was established by the]
General Assembly as the Unemployment Compensa
tion Commission.
Before the International
Association of Personnel
In Employment Security
u
Give A Man A
Job Worth
Doing . . . And An
Honest Wage . .
."
A Speech By LUTHER HODGES, JR.
Chairman
North Carolina Manpower
Development Corporation
I find my topic today quite fas-cinating
. . . The Development and
Utilization of Our Human Re-sources
. . . While I did not choose
the title itself, I readily agreed to
speak on the subject, for it suggests
a chain of ideas which I would en-joy
exploring with you briefly.
To many people, the term Human
Resources is just a fancy way of
talking about plain, everyday peo-ple
... to those of us here today,
however, the term means people
who are, by some definition, un-developed
or under-developed . . .
unutilized or under-utilized . . . The
implication is that these people
can be helped . . . that they can
be developed and utilized . . . made
useful and, more importantly, made
to feel useful.
Who are they then and where
can they be found? . . . And what
can be done about them once they
are found? . . .
These people are not, first of all,
just the unemployed ... As the De-partment
of Labor measures such
things, we anticipate a 5 per cent
unemployment rate in 1970 . . .
While we can always debate wheth-er
or not the current rate is toler-able,
the important point is that
the unemployment rate does not
begin to define the problem ... In
North Carolina, for instance, per
capita income—the measure of what
wage earners average—is around
$3,600 annually . . . None of us here
would wish to live on that amount,
HODGES
but all of us can agree, I am sure,
that many North Carolinians who
are working are part of our under-developed
and under-utilized human
resources . . .
We have farmers who are living
a marginal existence on worn-out
tobacco plots . . . Mountain folks
eking out a bare subsistence . . .
People without skills or sufficient
education . . . Members of minority
races whose color works against
them . . . There are estimates that
the total number of these people
—
the so-called "universe of need" for
our many manpower programs
is in excess of one-half million,
That's here in North Carolina
alone . . .
What is to be done for these
people? . . . Well, the answer takes
many forms and many programs
but the many programs are certain-ly
very new . . . The first Manpower
Development Training Act is only
eight years old . . . And as you
know far better than I, it was not
many years ago when it was con-sidered
quite sufficient just to re-spond
to individuals who were prop-erly
motivated and who were re-ferred
to an employment office for
jobs which the employer saw fit
to list . . .
But heavy new responsibilities
have been given to the Employ-ment
Security Commission—to all
of you—as a result of the national
concern for our neglected human
resources ... In North Carolina,
the Manpower Development Cor-poration
was formed to help State
agencies like yours meet these chal-lenges
. . .
MDC was not equipped, nor were
we designed, to perform line func-tions
. . . Our goal is to develop
new programs, new techniques, for
full utilization of the State's human
resources . . . When we succeed,
we spin-off these programs and
techniques to line agencies like
yours ... Or like the Community
College system, with which we are
also working at the present time
... Or the Department of Con-servation
and Development ... Or
other agencies and organizations I
could mention . . .
But it's not my desire today to
discuss MDC's current programs . . .
Many of you are familiar with
them . . . And if you are not George
Autry and the staff will welcome
a future opportunity to discuss
them further.
As a dedicated member of our
Board, Col. Kendall has been of
great help in formulating our pol-icies.
And Alden Honeycutt has
been of inestimable assistance in
implementing them ... To both
these men we are continuingly
grateful . . .
What I do want to talk about
today is policy . . . National policy
and the way it affects State policy
. . . For it is at the policy level
that we must begin if the effort
to utilize and develop our human
resources in North Carolina and
the nation is to succeed . . .
We at MDC feel that we have
had a significant role in preparing
North Carolina for the age of man-power
development . . . We have
created some tools . . . We have
made some progress . . . We have
seen ESC and other State agencies
make much progress . . . Yet we
are convinced that the surface has
barely been scratched . . . And, as
a matter of fact, in the current
business slow-down, conditions are
in some respects worse than they
were a few years ago, for we are
encountering significant industrial
lay-offs . . .
What can be done? . . . Permit
me to comment on two aspects of
current national policy considera-tions
. . .
One policy change being consid-ered
includes three bills currently
undergoing hearings in the House
Select Labor Subcommittee . . .
There are significant differences
among the three—one of which
bears the stamp of the Nixon Ad-ministration
. . . But the consensus
is that whatever bill finally emerges
will substantially reform existing
manpower legislation . . . The key
to this reform is the placing of
more responsibility and more power
in the hands of the States . . .
ESC QUARTERLY
At the present time, manpower
programming originates at the fed-eral
level . . . The federal govern-ment
determines what kind of ef-fort
is going to be made across the
nation ... It establishes programs
such as the Neighborhood Youth
Corps, Mainstream, the Concen-trated
Employment Program, and
others . . . States, cities, public
and private agencies—all who wish
to participate—must fit their ef-forts
to preconceived federal pro-grams
. . .
There are some obvious disad-vantages
to the current policy . . .
The most obvious, and the most
telling disadvantage is the deaden-ing
of creativity at the local and
State levels . . .
What good does it do to come
up with a brilliant concept for uti-lizing
and developing human re-sources
when no funding can be
found? . . .
At the other extreme, the federal
programs—once established—tend
to fill out their quotes whether they
are useful or not . . . There seems
to be some law that says that pro-grams
tend to be used whether they
are any good or not—just as chairs
tend to be occupied in a business
office whether their occupants are
useful or not . . .
Another serious problem spawned
by this top-to-bottom method is a
form of programmatic split person-ality
... It is entirely possible
—
again, as you are all aware—to get
funding for a training program . . .
The teaching tools, the personnel,
the supportive components . . . And
then not be able to get stipend
money to support the trainees while
they are in the program . . .
The stipend money comes from
a different source . . . From the
MDTA allocation ... So a program
can be rich—even too rich—in most
of the necessary resources and yet
be totally unworkable for lack of
a far smaller sum of money that
simply can't be found in the proper
pot . . .
What all this suggests to me is
exactly what the new legislation,
by and large, proposes to change
namely, that federal appropriations
should be channeled directly to
the States through an appropriate-ly
designated State agency . . . That
this money come only when the
States come up with a workable
plan for attacking their manpower
problems . . . And that the States
have full freedom within their own
plan to put the dollars where they
will do the most good . . .
The Governor, or someone he
designates, would have real deci-sion
making powers under such a
ESC QUARTERLY
system . . . And I feel strongly that
this would be all to the good . . .
But unfortunately, this one change —while critical to our success in
the vital area of the Development
and Utilization of our Human Re-sources—
is not enough . . .
Unemployment itself is a prob-lem
and the projected unemploy-ment
of 5 per cent for 1970 is clear-ly
no solution . . . While some do
not consider 5 per cent or 4 million
unemployed a particularly startling
problem, we know that unemploy-ment
does not fall evenly on our
population . . . Unemployment is
directional and selective ... It
strikes at those at the bottom of
society—the day worker, the un-skilled
or semi-skilled worker, the
on-the-job trainee trying to pull
himself out of the trough of pover-ty
... In short, at the very people
we have identified as the under-developed
and under-utilized human
resource in our society.
It strikes most specifically in
America and in North Carolina at
the blacks—both men and women
—
at the poor, and at the young . . .
They are, literally, the last hired
and the first fired . . . Since there
is little or no unemployment at the
middle and upper levels of society,
a 5 per cent rate really means 25
or 30 per cent unemployment at the
lower levels . . . This means more
black people, more young people,
and more poor people out of work.
The question, then, is not how
much unemployment we can stand,
but whether America can afford to
tempt a worsening of the class and
race antagonisms which we have
seen flare up and ignite in our cities
in recent years . . .
There is another question ... It
is pretty much accepted knowledge
that the administration in Washing-ton
feels that a certain amount of
unemployment is a necessary tool
in the attack on inflation ... In
other words, a slowdown in our
economy and tight money inevit-ably
mean more people out of
work . . .
If this is so, does not the adminis-tration
. . . does not any adminis-tration
. . . bear a certain respon-sibility
for members of its society
who are thus rendered unemployed?
I think it does. And the gather-ing
support in Congress for some
new legislation on behalf of income
assistance is evidence that many
thoughtful men are convinced that
they have a share in such a respon-sibility
. . .
But income assistance . . . assist-ance
whether a man works or not
. . . does not seem to me to be the
answer . . . We are a work-oriented
society and we must remain so . . .
MDC's experience with the disad-vantaged,
the down-but-not-out, has
convinced me that the vast majority
of these people want to work . . .
They want to be productive, func-tioning
members of a society that
has some rewards for them and for
their families . . .
In my view it is inconsequential
whether government oAves anyone
a minimum level of support ... By
itself, this is not enough . . . What
a government as rich and affluent
as ours really owes its citizens is
a working chance ... a job they
need not be ashamed of . . . And I
am clearly not suggesting some
more WPA "make work" . . .
This country has never been lack-ing
in real tasks for its people to
perform . . . Our cities need restor-ing
and beautifying and humaniz-ing
. . . Our people need low-cost
housing . . . Our working poor need
transportation . . . Our rivers and
air need cleaning . . . Our mail
services need improving . . .
There are enough useful jobs,
skill producing jobs, to keep every
American of working age and work-ing
mind busy from now on . . . All
we need is the will in Washington
to see that such a policy is init-iated
. . .
Here, again, the States, which
have traditionally been the experi-mental
bellwethers for national pol-icy,
could have a major role ... If
federal funds to be used for man-power
by the States according to'
their own plans were greatly am-plified,
and if the States were en-couraged
to develop exciting, new,
local, regional and State-wide at-tacks
on environmental problems,
the job could be done . . .
Through such an effort, we might
literally end unemployment and al-so
attack our most serious public
problems in one stroke . . . Just
think of what we as a nation pay
now in unemployment compensa-tion
and welfare support, and then
the cost of any sweeping new pro-gram
will not seem so grand . . .
This would be, in my view, the
clearest and best possible utiliza-tion
of the under-utilized . . . The
best development of the under-developed
human resources of the
nation . . . We could give these in-dividuals
not only jobs, but skills
. . . new skills to answer some of
society's most pressing needs.
Give a man a job worth doing and
an honest wage and you will see
what this nation's human resources
j
will accomplish . . . We at MDC
j have seen what these individuals I
can do with more traditional jobs i
(See HODGES, Page 25)
ii
. . . withstood the test of time.
99
By GEORGE J. VAVOULIS
President, ICESA
During the course of my re-searching
for this discussion today,
I found that there is very little
official or unofficial source material
or documentation of the formation
and development of the Interstate
Conference of Employment Secur-ity
Agencies. What material I did
find was most enlightening. The
purposes of the organization are
pretty well documented in its Con-stitution.
Let me quote from Ar-ticle
II of the Constitution, under
the heading "Ohjectives":
"To improve the effectiveness
of unemployment compensation
laws and employment service
programs***,
"To foster a closer relationship
and the exchange of ideas among
the Administrators,
"To promote the study, develop-ment,
and use of proper and effi-cient
methods of adminstration,
"To encourage the cooperation of
the several Employment Security
agencies in the conduct of funda-mental
research into the basic
causes of unemployment***, to
determine in what fields employ-ment
opportunities are increas-ing,
and what types of industries
and trades are responsible for in-creasing
the hazards of unem-ployment,
having in view the
finding of new fields of employ-ment
and a greater stabilization
of existing fields of employment,
"Through study and research, to
propose new legislation, both
State and Federal, in the basic
field of employment security."
My research indicates that the
Constitution and Code were initially
adopted on October 20, 1937 on the
occasion of the first nation-wide
meeting of administrators. Amend-ments
to the Constitution and Code
have been made from time to time,
but the basic objectives remain
much as they were initially drafted.
You will note that "unemployment"
was a prime concern of those early
drafters, yet the "Objectives" re-main
currently of sufficient broad-ness
to cover the many new activ-ities
in which we have become en-gaged
in the past seven years.
The old saying, "Necessity is the
mother of invention", is certainly
true with respect to the formation
of the Interstate Conference. If you
think things are hectic now—and
they are—look back to 1937. Unem-ployment
compensation was the
legitimate offspring of a shotgun
wedding between the Federal gov-ernment
and the States. Under the
Social Security Act, which was
passed in 1935, each State was re-quired
to pass an unemployment
compensation law which would
meet Federal standards, and obtain
the necessary Federal approval
prior to January 1, 1937. In many
States this called for a special ses-sion
of the legislature. Draft legis-lation
which would meet Federal
standards was furnished to the
States, and most of the State legis-latures
accepted and adopted such
legislation with little or no change
to launch their initial unemploy-ment
compensation programs. In
Minnesota, and in several other
States, this legislative action was
taken on Christmas Eve of 1936,
with the appointed U. C. Adminis-trator
personally carrying the en-acted
bill to Washington to insure
timely approval. Since that time,
the several States have amended
their initial bill until there remains
little, if any, resemblance to the
draft legislation so hurriedly adopt-ed.
So, the confusion began! States
were called upon to initiate an en-tirely
new program in partnership
with the Federal government. Both
partners were asked to take un-precedented
actions—the Federal
partner to finance 100% a program
to be carried out entirely by the
States. Neither partner had any ex-perience
in this concept of coopera-tive
(and coordinated) action. Na-turally,
those were days of con-fusion.
Each partner needed and
sought the help of the other. In
such an atmosphere, the Interstate
Conference was born in the Fall of
1937. The States (and the Federal
government) had "muddled
through" most of the first year.
There had been hurried calls and
meetings to devise forms and pro-cedures
for collecting employer con-tributions
(taxes). Now, however,
in most States benefits were to be
paid for the first time beginning
in January, 1938. The moment of
truth was at hand! The number
of unemployed was tremendous.
Machinery must be established to
pay inter-state benefits, something
entirely new. How would coverage
be established for individuals who
worked in more than one State?
What about rules and regulations?
How would it be decided among
several jurisdictions (and who
would decide) that the rules and
opinions established in one State
would be binding in another? These
are seemingly elementary problems
now, but in 1937 they were new,
different, important, and even
grave.
It was clear that some vehicle
was needed to serve as an exchange
for ideas, solve problems of mutual
concern among the States as well
as to present uniformly the posi-tions
of the States in their negotia-tions
with the Federal partner. The
Interstate Conference, therefore,
consisted chiefly of unemployment
compensation administrators and
staff at the beginning. The work-ing
committee approach was used
to solve the problems of the States,
draft binding agreements on inter-state
coverage and benefits and
establish communication with the
Federal government. The Interstate
Benefit Payment Committee is an
example of the early cooperation
among the several States and with
the Federal government. The com-mittee
then, and still does, work out
the inter-state benefit payment pro-cedures
to which the States sub-scribe
and which the Federal gov-ernment
approves. So out of this
mass of confusion there came mut-ual
understanding and a mutual ex-change
of ideas which still exists.
The organization has withstood
the test of time and, in fact, has
grown and flourished in the thirty-three
years since its formation. By
1939, most of the States had formed
VAVOULIS
ESC QUARTERLY
employment security agencies re-sponsible
for administration of both
the unemployment compensation
and employment service programs.
The committee approach still exists
to work out mutual problems in
both programs and with the Fed-eral
government.
While the States were still en-gaged
in working out problems re-lating
to unemployment compensa-tion,
World War II was suddenly
upon us, bringing with it the Fed-eralization
of the Employment Serv-ice
under the emergency powers of
the President. The States soon be-came
aware of a move by the Fed-eral
government to take over the
total State operation. It was during
this time that representatives of
the Interstate Conference first ap-peared
before a congressional com-mittee
to give the States' position,
which included the philosophy of
the Social Security Act in giving to
the States the complete administra-tion
of the unemployment compen-sation
program. Since that time, the
Conference has been recognized by
the Congress as the spokesman for
the States. Our position has been
sought and given whenever legisla-tion
is being considered by the Con-gress
which affects our operations
—
both E S and U C.
While our purposes may differ to
some degree, there has always been
a cordial relationship with the In-ternational
Association of Person-nel
in Employment Security. We
appreciate the cooperative relation-ship
which has built up over the
years. Let me cite a recent example
of joint action and cooperation be-tween
the two organizations. That
is the Cooperative Research Pro-ject
"to determine the subjects of
study relevant to preparation in the
field of employment security". The
Interstate Conference Committee
on Training, chaired by the West
Virginia Administrator, Clem Bas-sett,
formed the Joint Committee on
Cooperative Research Projects,
bringing in representatives of IA-PES
and the Manpower Administra-tion
as well as the Interstate Con-ference.
The University of Cali-fornia
and the University of South
Carolina are engaged in the re-search
projects with the Joint Com-mittee.
Progress has already been
noted, and we expect much more
as the study progresses. I am sure
that more joint ventures will be
undertaken in the future for the
mutual benefit of both organiza-tions.
I shall foster this type of ar-rangement.
And what about tomorrow? What
will the role of the ICESA and the
IAPES be in the formulation of
ESC QUARTERLY
new manpower programs or poli-cies?
I think we are on the thres-hold
of an action as revolutionary
as that which initiated the entire
cycle in 1935-1937. I am speaking
about the Comprehensive Man-power
Act, which has been pro-posed
to the Congress. This Act will
bring about sweeping changes in
manpower delivery systems, and
the role which we as Employ-ment
Security Agencies will play
in them. Much of the direction and
flexibility will be the responsibility
of the individual states, and we as
the single agency with demonstrat-ed
expertise in this field, must lead
the way. That is tomorrow—an ex-citing
tomorrow.
We need each others' abilities and
strengths to be joined together
whenever possible to work coopera-tively
when the need arises. As in
1937 and the early years of the Con-ference,
the past seven years have
been hectic, confusing and, some-times,
frustrating. ICESA and IA-PES—
the administrators and the
employees—have worked together
to bring order out of chaos. I am
sure we will continue to do so if we
are to solve the still serious man-power
problems which face us as
we enter the 1970's. Your problems
are our problems. They must be
solved. You are assured that the
Interstate Conference stands ready
to work with you.
George J. Vavoulis is Presi-dent
of the Interstate Confer-ence
of Employment Security
Agencies, an organization in-cluding
membership of the
nation's state Employment
Security programs. He is the
administrator of the Min-nesota
agency. The speech,
which is reprinted here, was
given by Mr. Vavoulis before
the 18th annual institute of
the International Association
of Personnel in Employment
Security at the Institute of
Government, University of
North Carolina.
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Employers Can
Benefit By
Close Attention
To Unemployment
Insurance Law
By R. FULLER MARTIN
Director
Unemployment Insurance Division
Many employers do not under-stand
the experience rating system
used to determine the yearly un-employment
insurance contribution
(tax) rate and often ask what he
can do to keep his individual rate
from increasing or obtain a reduced
rate.
The "experience rating system"
is a plan by which employers are
taxed to support the payment of
unemployment insurance benefits
in direct proportion to the degree
of unemployment experienced by
their workers along with the po-tential
liability for the payment of
unemployment insurance.
The first step in the rate assign-ing
process is to compute the state-wide
Trust Fund ratio by dividing
the amount in the Trust Fund as of
August 1 by the total taxable wages
(payroll) for the fiscal year ended
June 30. The size of the ratio de-termines
which of the nine rate
schedules will be applicable to all
employers for the next calendar
year. This gives the potential lia-bility
as related to funds available
for the payment of unemployment
insurance on a statewide basis.
The next step is the computation
of each employer's individual ratio
of the balance in his experience
rating account as related to the
three preceding fiscal years taxable
wages. The employer's experience
rating balance is the total of all con-tributions
paid plus interest and
other credits to his account minus
all unemployment insurance bene-fits
charged to his account (under-scored
for emphasis). This gives
the individual employers potential
liability as related to the funds
available in the employers experi-ence
rating account for the pay-ment
of unemployment insurance.
The contribution rate is then as-signed
to each employer based upon
the fund ratio schedule (statewide)
and the experience rating formula
for each employer as set forth in
Section 96-9 (b) 3 c of the Employ-ment
Security Law of North Caro-lina.
The rate schedule for 1970 is
schedule G which is a lower sched-ule
than was applicable for 1969.
The average tax rate for all em-ployers
in 1960 was 1.6 percent and
the average rate for 1969 was 1.14
percent. The average rate for 1970
is expected to be lower. This does
not mean that every employer will
receive a reduced rate. The reduc-tion
of rates depends on what the
employer is doing to help himself
and at the same time help the Em-ployment
Security Commission of
North Carolina effectively admini-ster
the Unemployment Insurance
Program.
Over the years the Employment
Security Commission has been
blessed with efficient and effective
administrative and staff leadership.
The Commission has pursued a
moderate financial policy to main-tain
a reasonable relationship be-tween
benefit disbursements and
contributions receipts. Proposed a-mendments
to the law have been
submitted periodically to the Gener-al
Assembly to update the law in
keeping with the constant economic
changes in the state. The Account-ing
Department with the help of
the Field Representatives and Tax
Auditors in the field administer a
most effective tax collection pro-gram.
The Claims Department with
the help of the Claims Deputies and
Appeals Deputies have adjudicated
contested claims in a commendable
manner and every effort is made to
pay unemployment insurance to
only those who meet the require-ments
of the law.
In spite of all these factors the
Employment Security Commission
needs the cooperation and help of
each and every employer to im-prove
the administration of the law
and the results could very well re-sult
in a reduction in the employ-er's
contribution rate.
Basically the experience rating
system is predicated on the stabiliz-ation
of employment statewide and
by each employer. We all know,
however, in spite of the best selec-tion
and employment practices as
well as economic fluctuation, un-employment
is bound to happen.
Some, of necessity, will be laid off
or separated because of lack of
work. However, there is always a
number who quit or separate for
reasons other than lack of work.
The second group is the one that
presents the problems.
What can the employer do?
Separation Notices
When preparing a separation
notice (Form NCUI 502) to be
given to the worker, or upon re-ceipt
of a request from the local
Employment Security office, please
enter the facts as to the separation.
If it is a voluntary quit or dis-charge
for misconduct, check the
appropriate item and give an ex-planation.
Attending Hearings
If an employer receives a Notice
of Hearing before the Claims
Deputy or Appeals Deputy concern-ing
a claim in which he was the
last employer or employer with
whom the claimant refused work,
the employer should make every
effort to attend the hearing. Al-though
the employer may have
furnished information in writing,
the determinations are based upon
sworn testimony. Your sworn testi-mony
is essential for the deputy
to arrive at a correct decision.
Claimants who are disqualified or
held ineligible for a given period of
time are not paid benefits during
this period and the potential bene-fits
are reduced. Thus, no benefits
paid results in no benefits charged
to the employer's experience rating
account. A recent analysis reveals
that the employers are appearing
at hearings before the Claims
Deputy in less than 20% of the
cases.
Fraud Cases
The Commission uses all of the
funds and facilities available to de-tect
cases of fraud (claimants work-ing
while receiving benefits or mak-ing
false statements concerning
their claims). This requires a veri-fication
of weekly wages you paid
the claimant for the same weeks
during which unemployment insur-ance
was paid. Therefore, when an
employer receives a request for
these weekly wages, the form
should be completed as soon as pos-sible.
(We realize an examination
by you of payrolls in storage will
be necessary.) When a case of fraud
is established and the case is pre-sented
in court, the attendance and
testimony of an employer repre-sentative
is essential for a convic-tion.
Furthermore, if you have in-formation
concerning anyone who
is receiving unemployment insur-
MARTIN
ance while working or who is not
available for work, the employer
should notify the local Employment
Security Office.
Offers of Employment
When an employer receives a
Notice to Last and Base Period Em-ployer
of Claim Filed (NCUI 550),
he should read the explanation on
the reverse side. Particular atten-tion
should be given to the section,
'Get the Unemployed Back to
Work.' If the worker is desirable
and the employer has a job avail-able,
he should notify the worker.
If the worker refuses the job, the
employer should notify the local
office in which the claim was filed.
A hearing will then be scheduled
to determine if the claimant should
be disqualified.
Request for Non-Charging of
Benefits
When an employer requests the
non-charging of benefits, he should
keep in mind that the Commission
must decide solely from the employ-er's
statement on the form wheth-er
the quit was voluntary, without
good cause attributable to the em-ployer,
or the discharge was for
misconduct connected with the
work. This decision cannot be made
from the mere checking of an item
"Voluntary Quit" or "Misconduct."
A full statement of facts concerning
the circumstances that brought
about the separation is necessary.
Unless this is done, the forms will
be disallowed or returned for ad-ditional
information.
(See ATTENTION, Page 38)
ESC QUARTERLY
HOLT
VFW Official Says More Funds Needed
For Veteran Employment Programs
A Speech By COOPER T. HOLT
Executive Director, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Washington, D. C.
I am both honored and delighted
to be participating in this meeting
to express my organization's high
regard for work being performed
by the North Carolina State Em-ployment
Service for the veterans
of the Tar Heel State.
For a few minutes I would like
to talk with you about a matter
concerning my country.
The membership of the Veterans
of Foreign Wars is concerned with
the attitude of too many people
over the war in Vietnam. We are
fearful that too many people have
forgotten just why we are in Viet-nam
and we are resentful of those
who would, for reasons of political
expediency, or any other reason,
retreat from Vietnam no matter
what the cost. The Veterans of
Foreign Wars of the United States
believes that our cause in Viet-nam
is just and right and proper
and we intend to challenge loudly
and clearly those divisive elements
in this country which would back
down from the challenge of com-munism
and sell out our men on
the fighting front.
I say to you here today that it is
high time that some of our amateur
diplomats, armchair generals and
would-be presidents in our Nation
be reminded that their continuing
harsh and distorted criticism of
America's continuing stand against
aggression in Vietnam is harmful to
the success of our mission and to
the security of our nation.
It may not be their intention, but
these self-appointed experts of in-ternational
military and political
strategy are providing false hope
and misleading comfort to the
enemy. They—no less, and perhaps
even more than the so-called anti-war
demonstrators—are actually
helping to prolong the war rather
than to shorten it, as they so zeal-ously
claim is their objective. Their
expressions of dissent and protest
provide the North Vietnamese with
a reason to believe they can achieve
the victory our men in uniform are
denying them on the battlefront
through a split in our ranks on the
home front.
The divisive antics of the peace-niks,
beatniks and draft card burn-ers,
can perhaps be blamed on
ignorance or immaturity. It is dif-ficult,
however, to find any excuse
for the increasing tendency of cer-tain
members of Congress and other
elected officials to assume they
somehow have acquired a special
insight and wisdom which quali-fies
them to render better judg-ments
on policies and actions than
the Secretary of Defense, the Sec-retary
of State or the Commander-in-
Chief.
Never in the history of our na-tion
has there been a greater need
for National unity and support of
our constituted leaders. The with-holding
of traditional bi-partisan
Congressional support from the
President in the conduct of foreign
policy can only serve to undercut
his bargaining strength with our
enemies and diminish his stature
among our friends.
What we need to try now is a
pause in irresponsible dissent to
demonstrate our strength of pur-pose
and unity of spirit. President
Kennedy said "The cost of freedom
is always high but Americans have
always paid it. And one path we
shall never choose, and that is the
path of surrender or submission."
The path to a just peace is the
one where we present a unified
front to the enemy, so that he will
not fail to recognize the futility of
his aggressive course of action.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars,
therefore, calls upon our Senators
and Representatives to support our
fighting men in Vietnam and to
work for a just and honorable peace
in Vietnam.
In my travels around this great
country of ours, I have spoken to
ESC QUARTERLY
literally hundreds of returning
veterans at hospitals, separation
centers and veteran functions and
meetings. To a man, their chief con-cerns
have been three-fold—(1) em-ployment,
(2) housing, and (3) ed-ucation—
not increased compensa-tion
and pensions as some people
would like you to believe.
On behalf of the thousands of re-turning
veterans who have been
serviced by your local employment
offices in assisting these men in
the areas of job procurement, voca-tional
guidance and on the job
training programs, the Veterans of
Foreign Wars wants to commend
you for your valiant efforts in spite
of the many obstacles which have
caused road blocks in giving this
continued service.
The needs of the returning vet-erans
are great, and they are get-ting
greater due to their ever in-creasing
numbers. However, addi-tional
emphasis on newer concepts
and programs geared to assist the
disadvantaged are chipping away
at the funds of existing programs
for veterans. New or additional
funding has not been forthcoming
to implement these programs of as-sistance
to the "hardcore" unem-ployed
and underprivileged.
Resources are limited and prior-ities
seem to be given to these new-er
programs to the detriment of
older existing programs. This prob-lem
seems to be prevalent in the
Department of Labor where there
has been a failure to provide ade-quately
for the States to do a good
job on behalf of the veteran.
The moral seems to be you can-not
give quality service with an
inadequate budget.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars
has no quarrel with these programs
geared to assist the disadvantaged;
we realize that programs must
change with the social and eco-nomic
conditions of the time.
However, the V.F.W. is of the
firm conviction that so long as
Congress is of the stated opinion
that "veterans shall receive the
maximum of job opportunities" and
that this responsibility is ultimately
up to the State Agencies to admin-ister
these employment benefits,
then the V.F.W. strongly feels that
these so-called welfare programs
should not take precedence over
funds for veterans programs.
I am informed that as of Septem-ber
1969, there were approximately
406,000 veteran applications on file
in the 2,200 local offices of the state-federal
employment security of-fices
over the nation. Of this num-ber,
approximately 54,000 were dis-abled
veteran applicants. Further,
that the majority of these applic-ants
were World War II and Kore-an
veterans.
Over the country, according to
estimates available to us, 1,830,000
veterans made applications for jobs
at the local employment offices in
1968. They were placed in 1,163,-
500 jobs. Included in this group
were 156,000 disabled veterans. We
feel this to be an excellent record —but again, it could be better.
We are concerned, however,
from reports reaching us from our
employment committees and post
employment officers to the effect
that adequate service often is not
being made available to veteran ap-plicants
at local public employment
offices. This fact, together with an
anticipated one million discharged
Vietnam veterans returning to civil-ian
life in the current calendar year
raises severe questions in our
minds.
Originally provided for by the
Servicemen's Readjustment Act of
1944 (G.I. Bill) and appropriately
amended to include discharged vet-erans
of later conflicts by the Vet-erans
Readjustment Assistance
Act of 1952 and the Veterans Read-justment
Benefits Act of 1966, the
United States Department of Labor,
acting through its Manpower Ad-ministration
and the Veterans Em-ployment
Services and State Agen-cies,
administers programs design-ed
to provide job counseling, test-ing
and preference in referral to
available jobs for veterans and pre-ferential
treatment in local office
services for disabled veterans.
These services are carried on at
the local office level under the di-rection
of a local veterans employ-ment
representative designated in
each office. Statewide, as you know,
this program is functionally sup-ervised
by a Federal Veterans Em-ployment
Representative, such as
Marvin Burton and Lawrence
Britt.
Beginning in 1966, reports began
to reach our Headquarters from
veterans who felt they had not
been granted adequate services at
these offices and comments from
our employment chairmen and
post employment people to the
same effect. In checking with
local office managers and the na-tional
office of the Veterans Em-ployment
Service, we were faced
with an admission that the time of
the local Veteran Employment Rep-resentative
was being utilized in
emphasized crash and long range
anti-poverty programs. In the
V.F.W.'s view this problem could
best be solved by earmarking funds
within the Department of Labor
budget process to provide for Vet-erns
Employment Representative
positions at the local office level
and perhaps more important, the
issuance of regulations which would
guarantee and complement the
provision of adequate time for them
to perform their duties. Most cer-tainly,
with the increasing number
of veterans returning from Viet-nam
and Southeast Asia and an
apparent increasing workload of
older veterans (World War II and
Korea), my organization is serious-ly
concerned that these veterans
receive the benefits due them under
law and accordingly, have brought
this to the attention of the Assist-ant
Secretary of Labor for Man-power.
It is apparent that all new pro-grams
being advanced are still be-ing,
for the most part, financed
through the same source, namely,
the "Unemployment Insurance
Trust Fund." We realize that this
money can only stretch so far, par-ticularly
in view of the multiple
programs that have come into ex-istence
over the past few years, and
because of this fact, no effort has
been made by the Labor Depart-ment
to re-fund these programs
from other sources.
It is our feeling that it would be
a worthwhile venture to have the
U. S. Department of Labor and the
State Agencies explore the possibil-ity
of approaching Congress and re-quest
funds from General Revenue
to adequately finance the respon-sibilities
of employment service for
veterans.
Over 7 billion dollars in appropri-ations
are made available for the
use of the Veterans Administration.
Why not put a forthright petition
to the Secretary of Labor to expand
the funding of services to veter-ans?
As you are aware, approximate-ly
650 million dollars are poured
back to the States on a funding
basis for the use of the States to
operate their Employment Service.
At the same time, your duties and
responsibilities are increasingly
heavier; yet the level of funding
remains the same.
Consider the future when the
Vietnam conflict will be considered
over, and the returning servicemen
are increased almost overnight in
great numbers. Other agencies will
be affected but the heaviest of re-sponsibility
will be placed on your
mission
—
that of employment.
Now, if I may, I would like to
briefly comment on Senate Bill
1088, better known as the Veterans
Relocation and Assistance Act.
While the V.F.W. would certainly
ESC QUARTERLY
favor S. 1088 or any similar legisla-tion
to assist veterans seeking
meaningful employment, appren-ticeship
training or on the job
training, we note this "special"
employment, and relocation assist-ance
is available only to veterans
who are eligible for education and
training benefits under Chapter 34,
Title 38, U. S. Code, and who are
discharged on or after the effective
date of the enactment of the legis-lation.
We have certain reservations in
connection with S. 1088. First, the
V.F.W. has traditionally favored
comparable benefits for all war
veterans. As an example, when the
V.F.W. sponsored and supported
legislation, later known as the Vet-erans'
Preference Act of 1944, to
provide preference in Federal em-ployment
for World War II vet-erans,
we also included the same
preference for World War I veter-ans
who were veterans of a war 25
years earlier.
Such preference as S. 1088 would
provide, could well be considered
as discriminatory against World
War II and Korean War veterans,
as well as Vietnam War veterans
discharged before the Bill's passage.
The V.F.W. believes that unless
the proposed legislation has "teeth"
it might well be administered as an-other
anti-poverty program by the
Department of Labor. In other
words, it would be so much "lip
service" insofar as veterans are con-cerned,
as has been the V.F.W.'s ex-perience
with respect to other em-ployment
programs administered by
the Department.
As an example, on August 14,
1967, the President instructed the
Secretary of Labor, in cooperation
with the Secretary of Defense, to
provide individual and personalized
employment assistance to all re-turning
Vietnam Era veterans. The
Department of Labor accepted the
assignment, apparently in good
faith, and passed it along to the
State Employment Agencies with
no additional funds or personnel,
but with the tremendous responsi-bility
of seeking out all recently
discharged veterans to counsel
them individually concerning their
employment problems and job
training needs. Several states re-quested,
but were denied, addition-al
funds and personnel to properly
administer the program. Yet while
this personalized employment serv-ice
to veterans, as requested by the
President, was being denied a sub-stantial
number of State Employ-ment
Service employees were as-signed
the specific responsibility of
assisting certain economically dis-advantaged
individuals, a group
which includes very few veterans.
The V.F.W. understands the need
for employment programs to as-sist
the economically disadvantaged
and, to a large degree, we support
them. However, the V.F.W. is op-posed
to any individual or group of
individuals receiving employment
counseling and job placement pre-ference
in the State Employment
Service over and above the war
veteran who is entitled to receive
preference by law.
The V.F.W. is fearful that the De-partment
of Labor would set up a
special class of veterans, the dis-advantaged,
by administrative ac-tion
and turn the proposed legisla-tion
into another anti-poverty pro-gram.
Even though this proposed
legislation is not specifically limit-ed
to assisting disadvantaged re-turning
Vietnam Era veterans, we
are concerned that the Department
of Labor might turn it toward that
direction administratively, exactly
the same way the Department has
administered the Manpower De-velopment
and Training Act of
1962. When Congress was consider-ing
the 1962 Act, which was favored
by the V.F.W., it was our under-standing
that the program was not
conceived as primarily for the dis-advantaged.
However, the Depart-ment
of Labor now requires the
local public employment offices to
reserve 65 percent of MDTA job
training openings for "disadvant-aged"
applicants, which excludes
most veterans. By virtue of Resolu-tions
of our 1968 and 1969 National
Conventions, we have urged the
Department of Labor to rescind this
requirement and permit full consid-eration
of any veteran for MDTA
training openings, regardless of the
veteran's economic status. To date,
no action has been taken by the De-partment
of Labor.
The V.F.W. does not believe that
any group of veterans should be
singled out for super job training
preference over other war veterans;
nor do we, in view of past ex-periences
with the Department of
Labor, believe that S. 1088 without
amendments would be any more
than mere "lip service" for the vet-eran
who is not disadvantaged.
We of the V.F.W. have always
viewed this employment program
as an excellent example of success-ful
State-Federal cooperation. Its
continuance is basic to the pro-vision
of law, namely, that "vet-erans
shall receive the maximum
of job opportunity in the field of
gainful employment", and over the
years, the V.F.W. has carefully re-viewed
the Veterans Employment
Service budget requests and feel
that they are moderate and not
equal to the occasion and have so
informed the Congress. However,
our concern here is that this out-standing
service to veterans not
be allowed to dissipate, because of
competition from other programs,
fine and as appropriate as they may
be.
Unemployment
Payments To
Vets Increase
Separations from the armed
forces in North Carolina during the
first three months of 1970 have in-creased
over the same period of
1969, causing a 50 percent jump in
unemployment insurance payments
to ex-servicemen, reports the N. C.
Veterans Employment Service.
Unemployment insurance bene-fits
to ex-servicemen, which are
paid by the State with federal
funds, increased from $244,500 dur-ing
the first quarter of 1969 to
$354,200 in the same quarter of
1970.
Jobless benefit payments have
increased because a higher propor-tion
of persons being discharged
from the military are filing claims.
The duration of payments is some-what
longer, and the average week-ly
benefit amount is higher. In
North Carolina the maximum pay-ment
is $50 a week.
Figures from the Veterans Ad-ministration
disclose that an aver-age
of 3,000 veterans are being dis-charged
each month from North
Carolina military bases.
Fort Bragg and Camp Lejuene
are two of the nation's major sep-aration
centers. Under federal law
military personnel have unemploy-ment
insurance available if they
cannot find jobs after discharge.
The program is administered in
North Carolina by the Employment
Security Commission.
According to a President's com-mission
assigned to study the Viet-nam
veteran, about 60 percent of all
persons being released from mili-tary
service enter the civilian labor
market looking for jobs. Most have
little difficulty applying skills learn-ed
in the military to civilian occu-pations.
In North Carolina the average
length of unemployment experienc-ed
by a discharged veteran is nine
weeks, a favorable comparison to
the national figure of 13 weeks.
10 ESC QUARTERLY
Immediate Job Information Provided By
New Placement Program in Winston-Salem
Reprinted From The Winston-Salem Journal
A job bank that will match job
seekers with openings will start
here Monday, and officials hope it
will rekindle the city's sputtering
fight against unemployment.
It will be the newest of about 35
job banks in the country, the only
one on the East Coast between Bal-timore
and Atlanta and the only
one in the country that is not com-puterized.
It is not strictly an antipoverty
effort, though it is expected to be
a boon to the Concentrated Employ-ment
Program.
In 1967, Mayor M. C. Benton's
Employment Resources Committee
recommended that a central clear-ing
house be established to provide
instant information on available
jobs in the city and the people who
could fill them. The job bank is it.
Local Commission
Ben Johnson, the Employment
Security Commission's area super-visor,
said the bank will not provide
new or increased services, just bet-ter
service. It should benefit em-ployers
as much as the unemployed,
though its emphasis is on job place-ment.
Twenty-two workers in the local
commission will operate the bank,
under the direction of Johnson and
Grover Teeter, local commission
manager.
It is a government project. Sim-plified,
it works something like this:
Employers with job openings call
a special job bank number—725-
0455—and give all pertinent in-formation
about the positions, quali-fications
needed, experience requir-ed,
hours and salary, and specify
how many people they want to
interview.
Meeting Arranged
Job orders are typed, coded, sep-arated
into 10 occupational classi-fications,
reproduced, encased in
plastic coverings and arranged in
notebooks.
Copies go to seven bank inter-viewers
and three Concentrated
Employment Program workers. All
job orders placed with the employ-ment
program will be channeled
to the bank.
Interviewers talk with job appli-cants.
After determining what an
applicant is qualified to do, the in-terviewers
try to find a suitable
job in the book.
Interviewers arrange a meeting
between the applicant and the em-ployer.
If the applicant has all but
one or two of the employer's quali-fications,
the interviewer will try
to persuade him to give the ap-plicant
a chance. If he will, the
rest is up to the applicant.
Only the specified number of ap-plicants
will be sent to an employer.
When a job is filled, it will be taken
from the book. Books will be up-dated
daily.
Obviously, the bank will be use-less
unless businessmen use it.
Johnson and Teeter expect the sev-eral
hundred companies which nor-mally
use the commission to con-tinue
feeding their requests to the
bank. They also expect many new
firms to use it after its reputation
is established.
To insure the bank's contact with
business, three workers will visit
businessmen regularly. The employ-er
services representatives will offer
the commission's free services (job
market information, job studies,
absentee studies) and try to get
job listings.
Teeter said the commission now
lists between 30 and 40 percent
of the city's available jobs. He be-lieves
the job bank will do much
better. The bank probably will have
between 500 and 600 jobs during
its first weeks, he estimated, but
that figure should increase to thou-sands
in time.
The bank will solicit and list any
job, including professional and tech-nical
ones, which is legal and does
not violate civil rights laws. It will
try to find work for anyone who
Interviewer Barbara Troll explains
Job Bank processes to interested ob-servers
during the Winston-Salem
formal opening of the unique job
placement program.
wants it, regardless of skill or back-ground.
There will be no charge.
Teeter and Johnson said the job
bank will end visits to business-men
by several different agencies.
The Concentrated Employment
Program is depending heavily on
the bank for jobs. While the bank
will not seek jobs expressly for the
program, Johnson said it should
turn up enough to give the pro-gram
a strong boost. This has hap-pened
in other cities, he said.
In addition, the employer ser-vices
representative will encourage
businessmen to lower job require-ments
to take on poor people.
The job books will be closely
guarded and only the employment
program and the commission will
have access to them. Later, John-son
said, other agencies may be
invited to join the bank.
Eventually, Johnson and Teeter
see the bank becoming the city's
prime source of manpower informa-tion
as well as the chief job place-ment
agency.
On hand to see Job Bank formally open were (L to R): Henry E. Kendall,
ESC Chairman; Mayor M. C. Benton of Winston-Salem; ESC Area Supervisor
Ben Johnson; Meade C. Lewis, the Mayor's assistant for manpower; and
local office Manager Grover Teeter.
ESC QUARTERLY 11
a
iJLill JLiOkJ
;ili
The nostalgia that I feel today
derives in part from memories of
the early days of the Employment
Service in this State and the per-sonnel
of it. But it derives in part
also from a consciousness of the
changes in society—the changes in
our political and economic systems
which have occurred in the last
few years.
Your program chairman asked me
to make the keynote speech on this
occasion and the occasion seems to
me to call for some reflection upon
the conditions of the past affecting
you, the conditions of the present
and as far as is possible, to those
of the future. I note that you adopt-ed
as your theme "Yesterday, To-day
and Tomorrow." In the course
of my remarks, I expect to pay
some attention to those changes in
our institution and our general so-ciety
to which I referred.
The key note is the basic note in
a musical composition. The keynote
speech is supposed to deal with the
principles upon which policy is
founded and upon policy itself. As
far as I know about your policy,
you have adapted it beautifully to
fit your assignment. I have no sug-gestions
of importance to make on
policy revisions.
What then should I say in the
keynote speech to you today? I
have decided for whatever value it
may be to you, to take a look at
the general conditions under which
you came into being, have function-ed
for a generation and are facing
a challenging future. In brief—the
past, the present and as much as is
possible, the future,
It may be truly said of you that
you are they who came out of great
tribulation. Thirty-six years ago, the
economic America was prostrate
and dreadfully afraid. The North
Carolina General Assembly met
that year with the banks closed
throughout the nation and had to
make a special provision to furnish
enough money to the members of
that General Assembly to pay their
expenses while they sought to
muddle through our particular sec-tor
of the disaster. Courage and
confidence were far from general
when a man so crippled physically
that he could not stand, stood up
and said, "We have nothing to fear
but fear itself" and called the peo-ple
to a concert of action to meet
inertia of the time.
There was less air contamination
then because there was little smoke
coming from industrial smoke
stacks and "Hoover Carts" emitted
no fumes.
When the President set up the
National Recovery Administration,
the man he placed in charge of it
declared that the great captains of
industry had become corporals of
disaster. Distressed property tax-payers
went on something like a
strike and the public schools began
to close. Unemployment was colos-sal.
War veterans were peddling
apples on city streets to eke out a
desperate living. Soup kitchens
were set up and bread lines form-ed.
It was then that the forerunner
of your Employment Service came
Capus Waynick, retired Ad-jutant
General of North Caro-lina,
directed the National Re-employment
Service in North
Carolina during and after the
depression. Considered to be one
of the most outstanding North
Carolinians of the century, he
served governors and presidents
during his 40 years of public
service.
Waynick was a member of the
State Legislature, chairman of
the State Highway Commission,
and organized the first N. C.
Health Education Institute. Way-nick
was campaign manager for
Governor Kerr Scott during the
late 1940's.
In the '50's President Harry
Truman appointed Waynick U.
S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, and
later, Ambassador to Colombia.
Governor Terry Sanford ap-pointed
Capus Waynick Adjutant
General and Commander of the
State's National Guard, and later
appointed him a mediator when
North Carolina experienced its
first racial disorders in the early
1960's.
In early life Waynick was edi-tor
of the Greensboro Daily
News, the Greensboro Record
and the High Point Enterprise.
into being. The National Re-em-ployment
Service was set up with
an overall director and 48 state di-rectors
to try to do something to
get some sort of jobs for the mil-lions
of hungry, jobless people. At
the insistence of the State Com-missioner
of Labor, the late Colonel
Ed Fletcher, I became Director for
North Carolina. Incidentally, Harry
Truman—destined to become suc-cessor
to Franklin D. Roosevelt as
President—was the director for Mis-souri
and was at a national conven-tion
of the Directors of the Nation-al
Re-employment Service in In-dianapolis
when I first met and
became acquainted with Mr. Tru-man.
We set up offices in all parts of
the State and our people met the
impact, the brunt of the great
masses of the unemployed who
were looking desperately for a
chance to get on some sort of pay-roll.
The jobless included many who
had been highly paid or even rich
before the break in economic con-ditions.
Now they were grateful
for a chance to get on some sort of
a payroll at which they could eke
out a living.
I am pleased that we have with
us here today the chief organizer of
the field forces at that time. I refer
to Mrs. May Thompson Evans,
now of Washington, D. C, wife of
a brilliant lawyer, W. A. Evans,
whom we also welcome today as a
guest. This distinguished couple
went on from the North Carolina
scene to important stations of serv-ice
in the nation's capitol. Both
have retired, Mr. Evans recently
as the highly honored Dean of the
Commissioners of the United States
Court of Claims. But in 1933, they
were as much victims of the depres-sion
as the rest of us and were
looking for some way to eke out a
living. It would be impossible to
overestimate the service Mrs. Evans
rendered in the crisis. Working for
a magnificent pay of $150 a month,
tirelessly for long and arduous
hours she drove over the State. She
and a fellow organizer succeeded
me as Director and I think her
work with the 1935 General As-sembly
deserves to have her rec-ognized,
may I say, as the "mother
of your organization." She not only
succeeded in a difficult undertaking
to get the service established by law
but proceeded with amazing skill to
promote professionalism in it and
I pause to introduce her who credit-ed
me with so many jobs that made
me think of a time when I was in-troduced
over in Durham to a club
and when the introducer got
through with a recital of my many
12 ESC QUARTERLY
jobs, I heard a man whisper to an-other,
"That guy's had a hell of a
time holding a job." I fear that my
beloved introducer was in error in
naming me as your first director.
As a matter of fact, your first di-rector
is here, Mrs. Evans. I am
glad the State owes a lasting debt of
gratitude to this woman who es-sentially
was the founder of your
organization.
Back then the highest paid em-ployee
of the State of North Caro-lina
had a $6000 salary and what
our underpaid teachers now receive
would have seemed incredible
abundance to us then. I'm glad to
note that some rather nice salaries
are being paid to the youth of the
Service. Maybe they should be in-creased,
I don't know.
Thus I have sketched briefly
that past of great tribulation out
of which your Service came. Per-haps
you need no appraisal from
me as to the present. You of the
Service have grown in number and
your job is a great one but your
professional skills have increased
to meet well the demands of a
period when unemployment haz-ards
have been unwritten to a sub-stantial
extent and workers are in
demand beyond supply in some
areas in our economic system, as
our nation recovering from disaster
has again become astoundingly pro-ductive.
The mobs of the present are no
longer jobless men and women re-sorting
to a bread line or a soup
kitchen and begging for work. They
are made up of those often well-financed
and highly privileged of
the economic and political systems
against which they march in pro-test.
A revolutionary mood exists
and it is spread and intensified by
self-elected leaders who believe they
have little to lose and much pos-sibly
to gain by radical changes in
society. The readiness of the com-mercial
media of communications
to spotlight the rioters is inspira-tion
to the wildest activists. We
have witnessed contempt for police
and the courts and for all disciplin-ary
and administrative authority
whether in the White House, on
university campuses or at city hall.
You go steadily and effectively on
with your work but generally the
disturbance is profound, as the
younger generation and some of
the old demand change.
What about the future? More in-timately
than most other profes-sionals
you are dealing with the
raw material of the future. Yours
are the problems of the worker and
the worker must determine largely
what the future shall be. How the
political and economic systems deal
with these problems probably will
decide our future.
The aboriginal American's labor
policy was very simple. Generally
the Indian let the woman do the
work while the man hunted, fished
and fought. The first peons in our
country established a policy that
also was both simple, functional
and spartan. It was enunciated by
Captain John Smith at Jamestown.
The dowdy Captain proclaimed that
those who wouldn't work, shouldn't
eat.
What industry did to keep work-ers
impoverished and subdued in-spired
Karl Marx, the German Jew,
to write "Das Kapital" some 120
years ago and to propose the scrap-ping
of private controls on the tools
of production. His appeal was to
the proletariat, condition of the
masses of which became no better
when a new industrial power of
Capitalism based on the use of
steam was greatly improved. City
slums readily replaced the some-what
more tolerable rural slums of
the era of handicrafting. Commun-ism
made little progress during
Marx's lifetime despite the fact
that he was molested very little in
his propaganda. No doubt the
frontier of hope that America pro-vided
for the Europeans helped to
stave off radical popular action
against Capitalism.
Our founding fathers had declar-ed
that man's right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness was
inalienable and that all men were
born to equality and possession of
those rights. They also declared
that government derives its proper
powers from the people and was
established to protect those basic
human rights and should be chang-ed
when they fail in the assign-ment.
Another early American
principle declared that the earth
belongs in usufruct to the living
generation.
This American plan was suf-ficiently
liberal and promising to
help Capitalism survive in appeal
to the discontented in the world
without destructive effect. When
Russian revolutionaries found in-spiration
in Marx, he appealed to
the discontented with his slogan
"workers of the world unite."
A large part of the human family
now lives under Communism and
we are fighting a war in Asia in a
costly effort to prevent the new
political system from spreading and
we watch uneasily insidious dis-loyality
in our own people while
radicals promote a menacing rest-lessness.
This restlessness is pro-nounced
among the young, many of
whom believe it their right and
duty to direct the economic and
political system under which we
live and build systems more to
their own liking.
I would not deny the right of the
new generation to work on sys-temic
changes. Long hair and
beards do not revolt me as I re-member
the head shaving cults of
the young males of my generation.
Some aspects of the youth move-ment
do seem to me a cause for
concern. The issue is no longer
primarily between the haves and
the have-nots. Our abundant cap-italist
production has been accom-panied
by governmental programs
which guarantee better distribution
of the benefits of labor and the
amazing productiveness we have de-veloped.
Some of the activists in
the youthful revolt are highly pri-vileged
under the present system
which they endanger. The concern
I feel is due in large part to the
alarming increase in the use of
narcotics and in the rioting against
MAY
THOMPSON
EVANS
CAPUS
WAYNICK
ESC QUARTERLY 13
all forms and procedures of discip-line.
"Every man holds his property
subject to the general right of the
community to regulate its use in
whatever degree the public wel-fare
may require it." That my
friends is a quotation from a Roose-velt—
not Franklin D., but Teddy.
It was Teddy who said it. Theodore
Roosevelt also wrote, "We stand
equally against government by
plutocracy and government by
mob." And here's another quotation
from Teddy. "No man is above the
law and no man is below it. We do
not ask any man's permission to re-quire
him to obey it. Obedience to
law is demanded as a right not
asked as a favor." That in my opin-ion
from the man who was Presi-dent
near the beginning of the 20th
century is Americanism under
who's banner we should stand firm.
Those who destroy law and order
open the way to dictatorship. Let
the new generation work as force-fully
as it will but let their drives
be kept within the bounds of dem-ocratic
action. I favor extending
the ballot to all 18 years of age and
older and full encouragement to
the restless young to express their
will, short of disorder and destruc-tiveness.
What will be your position in
the face of the increasing tendency
toward disorder or is that tendency
increasing? I've observed some
signs of a backlash among youth
itself against the disorder. The
young can correct their own course
of action to insure a safe change,
changes that will fall far short of
subjecting us to the tyranny over
the mind of man which would be
intolerable for those who love true
liberty.
What part will you play in so-ciety
in the years ahead? It's easy
to predict that it will be an impor-tant
role and it will take place in
a markedly changed world. Govern-ment
has been revolutionized in a
generation without civil war or
murderous purges. That under
which we live today is not very like
that of a generation ago and only
remotely like that under which we
lived at the turn of the century. On
rare occasions then, the power of
the federal government infringes
on our political and economic life
at the turn of the century. Federal
taxes were collected from few and a
revenue agent did little save inter-fere
with the conversion of some of
the farmer's corn into alcoholic
squeezings. Nobody looked to the
federal government for distribu-tion
of lodgings. Now who do you
know who doesn't receive some
kind of a check from the central
government?
We now live in a welfare state
and it is not likely to be restored
to the old conditions under which
everyone was forced by necessity
to find his own living. For better
or for worse, we are subject to the
irresistible pressure of public ex-pectations
and the burden of a new
awareness of social responsibility.
I quote from Galbraith's "A New
Industrial State." He writes that,
"The services of federal, state and
local governments now account for
between a fifth and a quarter of all
economic activity." A fifth and a
quarter. In 1929 it was about 8 per-cent.
This far exceeds the govern-ment
share in such an avowedly
socialist state as India, considerably
exceeds that in the anciently so-cialist
democratic kingdoms . of
Sweden and Norway, and is not
wholly incommensurate with that
of Poland, a communist country.
That represents the change which
forces you to face a changing
future.
The big issue is whether the re-bellious
of the present will pre-serve
the one vital ingredient in
state of affairs of those who cherish
personal liberty or will feed them-selves
and the rest of us into dicta-torship.
Can we successfully insist
on the use of the democratic pro-cess
and the changes of the years
ahead and preserve great material
and psychological values from fire
and pillage. Lloyd McCoy predicted
more than a century ago that the
fate of the American political state
would be destruction by the mob or
control by a dictator. Those of us
who are optimists think neither
should be the fate of a nation both
rich and generous but the present
is a period of definite crisis. Most
of you still have work that is in-volved
closely with the changing
conditions of years ahead and will
have much to do with the decision
and I wish you well.
I note by today's press, the
papers emphasize that a half mil-lion
Americans marched yesterday
in disabling protest against the
President and his policy but there
are 200+ million Americans and
while I do not ignore the danger of
a few, I still believe in the sanity
and soundness of the majority.
In conclusion, I have no way of
knowing whether I have said any-thing
here that will change your
thought or action as you enter this
troubled future. But whether I
have said anything to help you or
not, I do manifest a firm admiration
for you, my faith in you, my good
wishes to you as you struggle with
the future and I thank you for al-lowing
me to be here and to speak
to you today.
IF EMPLOYMENT SERVICE FAILS CHALLENGE
". . . it may live on as a mundane public
service, but it will have missed its destiny."
A Speech By MAY THOMPSON EVANS
Mr. Harris, General Waynick,
Colonel Kendall, Mr. Honeycutt, Mr.
Martin, Mr. Britt, Dr. Hayman, Dis-tinguished
Guests, and Fellow Mem-bers
of the International Associa-tion
of Personnel in Employment
Security:
I join General Waynick in ex-pressing
exhilaration over being
your guest at this 1969 IAPES An-nual
Institute. Thank you for
giving me the opportunity of being
here. I came to listen to you, as
well as to talk about "Employment
Security—Yesterday, Today, and
Tomorrow."
Ten of the most rewarding years
of my life were devoted to the Em-ployment
Service, State and Fed-eral.
I have retained a lively in-terest
in the Service as a profes-sional
field, and also in our Inter-national
Association.
Of many career activities, I rank
four as my best contributions to
my state; and each of these is re-lated
to you. They are:
. . . Helping to set up in North
Carolina the emergency organiza-tion
of the National Reemployment
Service (thanks to General Way-nick);
1
. . . Piloting through the 1935
General Assembly the enabling leg-islation
for our permanent state
employment service (thanks to all
the people in the NC-NRS at that
time);
. . . Initially setting up our state
service (thanks to Governor J. C. B.
Ehringhaus); and
. . . Initiating our state's first
merit system for the appointment
of personnel (thanks to Washington
for holding off this Wagner-Peyser
requirement until we could per-
14 ESC QUARTERLY
suade North Carolinians to take the
examination for placement on our
first recruitment roster; and thanks
to Duke University for devising our
system for us).
It was right here in Chapel Hill,
in the spring of 1944, that we of the
NC-NRS held our first state-wide,
in-service, educational institute, co-sponsored
by the University. ... I
have here a picture of that insti-tute
group: here is General Way-nick
. . . Mr. Campbell, our statis-tician,
who was a wizard with
figures . . . Mr. Honeycutt . . . Mrs.
Honeycutt . . . and perhaps others
who are here today. . . . These are,
of course, only a few of the 200 to
300 who worked fervently and
feverishly under General Waynick's
inspiration to set up the National
Reemployment Service in our state;
and who later worked with me in
setting up our permanent State
Employment Service.
My connection with our Associa-tion
began when we hosted the
Convention of IAPES at Grove
Park Inn, in Asheville, in 1935. By
that time, General Waynick had
left us, and I was serving the state
in the dual capacity of NC-NRS Di-rector
(appointed by Secretary of
Labor Frances Perkins) and Direc-tor
of the State Employment Serv-ice
(appointed by Governor Ehring-haus).
Some of you here today
helped with the Asheville Conven-tion.
. . . You recall that we held
our second NC educational institute
in conjunction with the Convention.
Subsequently, during my years
in Washington, through and follow-ing
World War II, I served as an
IAPES Vice-President; as Program
Chairman for the 1948 Convention,
in Windsor, Ontario; and as Presi-dent
of the District of Columbia
Chapter.
My professional experience has
been with the Employment Service
part of Employment Security. The
Federal-State Employment Service
was born in the crisis of mass un-employment
of the Great Depres-sion
of the early 30's It was redi-rected
in the early 40's to become
the operating arm of the War
Manpower Commission. It now
faces a third major crisis, brought
on by impending socio-economic
breakdown. I believe that survival
of the Employment Service as a
determining influence in our dem-ocracy
depends on another redirec-tion
today. I served through the in-itial
organization and the first re-direction,
and wish now that I were
still in harness to help with the
current challenge.
From the Service's inception and
during those earlier years, we were
highly relevant, very much "in",
wholly involved, and totally com-mitted.
With 189,000 registered un-employed
North Carolinians, all
seeking work, what else could we
be?
Our earliest beginnings were
motivated by HRD—human re-sources
development. Let me give
you an illustration of how early the
HRD policy was set.
In the very first month of NRS
(June 1933), General Waynick
gave me my first field assignment —to go up to a little community
beyond Brasstown. Some people up
there had sent word that they
needed work. I turned away as Mr.
Waynick spoke, so that he would
not see how flabbergasted I was by
an assignment to seek out some
families 350 miles away in the
high mountains, when we had
hundreds of unemployed, well ed-ucated
and able people, right on
the streets of Raleigh. But I got the
HRD policy in a flash.
Unable to find Brasstown on my
map, I nevertheless made my way
there after considerable difficult}^.
From there, on the first lap of the
journey to the community "be-yond",
I rode in a 2-wheel cart. On
the last lap, my local guide and I
rode mule-back—both of us on the
same mule. But I reached that
huddle of families who had sent
word to their state job-boss; and
we got them on jobs.
Those early days of NRS were
days of innocence as well as ingen-uity.
Many of us did not know a
bulldozer from a black jack, but we
matched a man and a bulldozer. We
did not know what a powder
monkey was; but we found one
—
and we did not go to the zoo in
search of him. If we had had a
Farm Labor Placement Service at
that time, however, we might well
have turned over to it an order
for an operator of a sheep's foot. A
Lorraine 75 sounded like an auto-matic
rifle, but after Joe Blythe
and I went to a construction site
and I climbed into the crane's cage,
we found a local, unemployed op-erator
who could compete with his
imported labor.
I can't resist sharing with you
at least one of my many colorful
moments with Contractor Blythe.
After a couple of long distance calls
about his labor crews and the law,
Mr. Blythe asked for a personal
conference. Many of you knew him
—stocky, burly, forceful. When he
came into my office, I left my desk
to greet him and to move to the con-ference
table. He stopped dead in
his tracks and, after recovering
from obvious astonishment, he
blurted: "My God! I thought you
were a great big woman."
Those were the days when we
learned by doing. We had no body
of professional and administrative
materials. We believed, however,
that we were building a long de-layed
institution, essential to our
democracy. We were determined
that its underpinnings would have
the full strength of our intelligence
and integrity. We had told our-selves
and all others that the Em-ployment
Service was not going to
be just another barnacle on the
ship of state. At the depth of the
Depression we had secured initial
funds from the General Assembly
to match fully the Wagner-Peyser
funds, and started out with the
gratifying sum of $150,000—so min-iscule
today. Our neighbor, Virginia,
however, was setting up a $15,000
Service. And our neighbor to the
south of us, South Carolina, had not
yet gone into action.
In our struggle to hand on to you
a heritage of strength and integrity,
we periodically had to "save" the
Service. I believe the most drama-tic
"saving" episode was the one
that posed the issue of whether we
would initiate our Service under
political or merit system appoint-ments.
This episode has never before
been told publicly. It occurred in
January, 1937. We were successful-ly
winding up a strenuous state-wide
campaign to persuade people
to take the merit system examina-tion,
so that our first appointment
roster would be an asset to the
Service. In order to conduct this
campaign, I had remained in Ral-eigh
for some months after my
husband had gone to Washington.
Since the year's campaign had
created sufficient enthusiasm for
the examination to assure merit
system appointments, I decided to
join my husband in Washington,
and so advised Governor Hoey one
morning. Before lunch he called
back to say he had a man to suc-ceed
me, who would be over at 8:30
the next morning for a bit of coach-ing
before the afternoon announce-ment.
I was a pricked balloon; the
entire world was a pricked balloon.
We had succeeded over the state in
establishing confidence in a new
merit system. I have never thought
so fast and furiously as I did on
that day. A flash came just before
closing time. At my request, staff
members stepped over to the pub-lic
library. Each returned with two
books approximately the size of
an unabridged dictionary. The sub-ject
didn't matter. The size did. The
books were piled high on the con-
ESC QUARTERLY 15
ference table—along with the slim
brochures we had on the Employ-ment
Service.
From 8:30 to 10:30 the following
morning, I explained to Mr. X that
the Employment Service was so
technical and scientific that he
would have to master, immediately,
volumes of complicated material.
He grew weary and left.
Governor Hoey called before
lunch to say that Mr. X had decided
he was more interested in some
other appointment.
In Washington, I was fortunate
in joining the War Manpower Com-mission
at its inception, as Deputy
Assistant to the Director of USES,
John Corson, who became also the
War Manpower Director of Agri-cultural
and Industrial Employ-ployment.
Our first responsibility
was to redirect the USES into the
operating arm of the War Man-power
Commission. Here again
were days, not so much of in-nocence
as of ingenuity and in-novation.
The crux of the war effort
being production, our national sur-vival
depended upon full utiliza-tion
of all manpower. You recall
that peace-time operation had been
geared to the refinement of place-ment—
the most qualified job appli-cant
for the job order. But the war
demanded redirection to conserva-tion
and control of manpower, the
breakdown of jobs and the train-ing
for new skills essential to the
war effort. There was for a while,
of course, a sense of frustration,
but we plunged into the task, as
you well remember. The record
shows Mission Accomplished.
After the war, I remained with
the USES until 1949, and helped re-convert
it to peace-time operation.
Now, twenty years later, in 1969,
the Employment Service faces an-other
major crisis, which may, I
believe, confront it with a greater
challenge that any it has yet
known.
My earlier reference to an im-pending
socio-economic breakdown
was intended to encompass in one
phrase the ills resulting from the
existence in our society of a size-able
segment of unemployed and
underemployed, less advantaged
people, and the accompanying mani-festations
of the so-called revolu-tion
of rising expectations. We hear
and talk much of the rural disad-vantaged,
the migration to the
cities, the ghettos, the hardcore un-employed,
the welfare mothers. Re-duced
to simpler terms, we are a
nation of haves and have-nots.
Those who are in the main-stream
of the economy have; those who are
not in the main-stream have not.
It is apparent to all that this situa-tion
cannot continue. The peace
and tranquility of the nation are at
stake. Unless we are somehow able
to bring these underprivileged peo-ple
into the main-stream of the eco-nomy,
we must pay the price of ris-ing
expectations in some other way.
The alternatives to employment
for these people are such eroding
expedients as a guaranteed wage,
the reverse income tax, or some
other measure equally alien to the
American tradition. Let us call
these programs what they are
—
subsidized unemployment.
The great challenge of these
times is to bring underprivileged
people into the orbit of employment
security—to help them secure pre-employment
preparation, to find for
them jobs they can hold and keep,
and through which they and their
children after them can strive to
reach their own rising expectations.
If private enterprise cannot or will
not provide sufficient jobs, and if
full employment remains our pol-icy,
then let us face the facts be-fore
it is too late: Uncle Sam must
be the employer of last resort, at
least until such time as the people
who are unemployed or underem-ployed
can be brought into the cur-rent
of private enterprise. If that
is the burden, let us accept it and
be on with the task, now—and as-sure
that it is employment, not a
dole.
If, 20 years ago, we in the United
States had taken seriously the
pledge of the Truman Administra-tion
to assure full employment for
the American people, and if we had
worked at it with unity of purpose,
we would not now be in the fix
we are in.
But, we have this national chal-lenge,
and it is on the very door-step
of Employment Security in
general, and of the Employment
Service in particular.
In order to meet this challenge,
the Employment Service will have
to accelerate its redirection and,
through innovation, redirect as
completely as it did to meet the
World War II crisis. In addition to
serving well qualified people who
seek jobs, the Service must give
most of its attention to ill-equipped
and unequipped people, many of
whom are not actively seeking jobs,
and who themselves have to be
sought out. Some states and cities
have already developed new con-cepts
which can help point the way.
As an old-timer sees it, the Em-ployment
Service must become the
community's central referral agency
not only for jobs and training, but
for pre-employment preparation,
and must also provide specialized
preparatory services on a case-work
basis. Furthermore, such new tools
as the computer must be put to full
use as new concepts are set into
full motion.
If you think today's socio-eco-nomic
challenge looms as a large
order, I must agree. I believe, how-ever,
that to "full employment"
there is no lasting alternative. If
the Employment Service fails to
rise to this challenge and capture
its opportunities, other agencies
will be expanded and created, as
has been done recently to direct
training and work for the lower
economic group. Thus, if the Em-ployment
Service fails to meet the
challege aggressively, it may live
on as a mundane public service, but
it will have missed its destiny.
I have faith that the Employment
Security system, with its tradition,
will embrace those now left outside,
and thus meet this most obstinate
challenge of our day.
1 The Federal Government in 1933
established the National Reemployment
Service (NRS). The Congress had ap-propriated
$3.3 billion in the National In-dustrial
Recovery Act, to create jobs. NRS
Directors, appointed to serve in each
state, organized state-wide systems with
county offices. The NRS was an em-ergency,
temporary service, to form a
nation-wide people-jobs net work until
states could secure legislation to estab-lish
permanent State Employment Serv-ices
affiliated with the United States Em-ployment
Services (USES — Wagner-
Peyser Act). The temporary NRS was
the forerunner of State Services, and was
discontinued after the Federal-State sys-tem
became a reality.
Mrs. May Thompson Evans
was the first director of the
North Carolina Employment
Service when it Avas establish-ed
in the mid 1930's.
A civil servant for over 25
years, she worked for the
United States Employment
Service, the Department of
Labor and the Department of
Health, Education and Wel-fare.
During World War II, Mrs.
Evans worked with the War
Manpower Commission, the
Office and Price Administra-tion
and Civil Defense. Cur-rently
retired, her most recent
employment was with the
President's Committee for
Consumer Interest in 1964.
Holder of a Masters degree
from Columbia University,
Mrs. Evans is an honorary
Phi Beta Kappa and holds an
honorary Doctor of Social
Services degree from the Uni-versity
of Richmond.
16 ESC QUARTERLY
AT FIRST PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICER SEMINAR
A Right to Know What Goes On
and a Right to Know What It Means
By ELMED OETTINGER
The proper study of mankind,
wrote Alexander Pope, is man. The
crux of that study, as playwrights,
poets, and philosophers long have
been aware, is the question, "Who
are we?" or, in terms of the in-dividual,
the question is "Who am
I?" If man is eternally in quest of
himself, if his ultimate goal has to
be to understand himself and his
environment to the utmost degree
that they can be understood and he
can understand them, to the end
that he can realize his own talents
and potential for service to man-kind
to the fullest, then any one
charged with conveying informa-tion
to the public has a challenge of
complex dimensions and a calling
of high seriousness.
Elmer Davis once wrote that
those disseminating the news were
in danger of becoming "mere trans-mission
belts for pretentious
phonies." He was writing at a time
when Senator Joseph McCarthy
was changing the number of com-munists
he alleged were in the
State Department almost daily. But
what Mr. Davis was saying es-sentially
was that most news in-volving
idea and substance has di-mensions
stretching far beyond its
Holder of AB and MA degrees
in Dramatic Arts, an LLB degree
in Law and a PhD degree in
English, Elmer R. Oettinger is
Assistant Director of the Insti-tute
of Government and an As-sociate
Professor of Public Law
and Government at the Univer-sity
of North Carolina in Chapel
Hill.
He edits the Institute of Gov-ernment's
magazine Popular
Government.
Oettinger instigated the semi-nar
for state and local govern-ment
information officers held at
the Institute of Government
January 5-6, and his comments
printed here on interpreting gov-ernment
news were given at the
end of the two day conference.
factual basis and thus to report
only the bare facts is to make one-dimensional
that which has many
dimensions. The practical results of
this sort of bare bones reporting
is to omit any semblance of inter-pretation
and to oversimplify to the
point that the reading, listening, or
viewing public is so little informed
as to have no sufficient basis for
understanding the true import of
the news and, consequently, for
forming opinions, evaluations, and
judgments based on the news.
It is my observation that the
spread of the radio and television
news commentary and the news-paper
column, together with edi-torial
pages, has helped bring added
dimensions to the reader, hearer,
and viewer. The tragedy is that so
large a portion of the population
appears not to read the editorial
pages or newspaper columns and
that a considerable number of list-eners
and viewers seem to pay
scant attention to commentaries
and documentaries. It is a sad fact
that not only is the power of an-alysis
not given in large degree to
many human beings but that the
power to appreciate and, therefore,
the desire to understand news in
A Naval officer during World
War II, he subsequently practic-ed
law in Wilson, his hometown,
and later joined the faculty at
UNC in the departments of Eng-lish,
Radio and Television, and
Motion Pictures.
Oettinger has written numer-ous
articles and several plays. He
is a member of the N. C. Press
Association, the State Bar, the
N. C. Bar Association, the Amer-ican
Association of University
Professors and is a Phi Beta
Kappa.
Oettinger is the founder and
director of the Institute of Gov-ernment's
Court Reporting and
Local Government Reporting
Seminars.
OETTINGER
depth is lacking in too many. The
challenge, it seems to me, is not to
inform or interpret less but to in-form
and interpret more—and more
creatively—in an effort to reach an
even larger portion of the popula-tion.
For an informed public pro-vides
the only basis upon which
democracy, even though represen-tative
democracy, can be assured
of functioning in the interest of
all.
But, you may say, "I don't write
editorials or columns or deliver
news commentaries or produce
documentaries. Sometimes the
media tries to seek to interpret the
information I provide them about
the workings of my agency. But
my job is to get out what use to be
called the straight dope [that's a
naughty word now]. My job is [in
more modern idiom] to tell it as it
is, to tell it straight." Well, the vir-tues
of reporting the news with
objectivity have been set forth too
often to require re-statement by
me. But you know, as well as I,
that objectivity in news often is re-translated
to mean bare bones facts,
over-simplification, and under-in-forming
the public. If your experi-ences
in any way parallel mine, I
believe you will tend to agree with
my conviction that true objectivity
in the news not only is extremely
difficult to obtain, but often impos-sible
to recognize or authenticate. I
do not wish to be misunderstood. I
am not saying that one must be
partisan in most aspects of his re-porting.
But I do say that informa-tion,
to be worthwhile, must be re-ported
in depth and breadth. And
I would point out to you the ob-vious—
that you are partisans by
ESC QUARTERLY 17
the very nature of your job and the
agency you represent. And that
raises some interesting questions,
not the least of which are: Do you
distort? DO you try to send out in-formation
straight? Do you gild
information to put the best face on
it from the standpoint of agency
viewpoint? Or do you interpret in-formation
so as to give the public
all the options to which it is en-titled
in its thinking? How do you
avoid being either a mere transmis-sion
belt or a conduit of agency-slanted
information? My guess is
that the danger is not so much that
you may deliberately slant the
basic news as that you select those
aspects which are calculated to in-gratiate
your agency or boss with
the public and achieve general sup-port
and approval for their ideas
and programs.
If this be true, I think it is time
for reassessing our public obliga-tion
in providing information. The
key to performance of public infor-mation
responsibilities in public
agencies must lie as much in
obligation to the public as to the
agency. That is to say, the public
not only has a right to know what
goes on in government but a right
to know what it means. To fulfill
that right you must arrange your
primary resources—words, sounds,
pictures—in vivid, useful, and
meaningful patterns. In other
words, there are certain basic re-quirements
which any able public
information officer or official must
have in our increasingly complex
world today. First, he (or she)
must have enough basic knowledge
and background information about
government to write about govern-ment.
That means, the person re-sponsible
for informing the public
must know both the nature, re-sponsibilities,
and goals of his own
department and agency and those
of all related departments or agen-cies.
He (or she) must know funda-mental
principles, philosophical and
practical, underlying our govern-ment
and its programs. He (or she)
must keep abreast of changes and
developments in government, in-cluding
new programs. And he (or
she) must understand government
in all its aspects in depth and in
detail. Otherwise information is re-tailed
routinely and in single di-mensional
form. If this be interpre-tation,
make the most of it!
Long age Marquis Childs wrote a
column in which he declared the
question was not whether govern-mental
news was managed but how
it was managed. My point is that it
should be managed, if at all, in the
(See OETTINGER, Page 38)
Government News
itAflbiN
By PETE IVEY
Director, UNC News Bureau, Chapel Hill
In the 1970 vocabulary of journal-ism,
two words
—
News Management
—carry a most frumious implica-tion.
"How Government News is Man-aged",
the original topic for this
panel, starts us off with the tacit
admission that news management
ought to be recommended. The title
might be softened or re-managed; to
read like this: "Resisting News
Management in Government" or
"Government News: Is it Managed?
To What Extent? And How Do We
Eradicate It—With DDT Spray or
Ban Roll-on Deodorant?"
But it does no good to dodge the
issue. What we are obliged to dis-cuss
here is not a juxtaposition of
emotion-laden words about govern-ment
news management and Credi-bility
Gaps, but the fundamental
question: are we hiding something
that ought not to be hid? Granted
that if democratic government is
to be sustained in order to assure
that the public be enlightened to
make its own decisions, are we
shedding candle power as we
should? And if we are not giving
enough illuminating what stands in
our way?
My thesis is that, in our peculiar
role as information officers, we are
IVEY
charged with responsibility to go
and get the news, to exercise per-suasion,
be guided by codes of eth-ics
in obtaining news, writing it
and presenting it to the news media
for dissemination to the public. We
are under obligation to be accurate
and honorable. We must identify
natural obstacles that block access
to the news, and strive constantly
to unclog the channels of com-munications,
so that flow of infor-mation
to North Carolina's five and
a half million people will be lub-ricated.
If this pipe reaming, chan-nel
clearing, unclogging, lubricating
task is News Management, make
the most of it.
Dean John Berry Adams of the
School of Journalism in the Univer-sity
of North Carolina said the big
issue is not management, but mis-management,
of the news. Speaking
at an Institute of Government
Forum here on May 19, 1969, Dean
Adams, said:
A simple dictum relevant in any
discussion of Access to Information
is this: 'Beware of human tend-encies;
they can do you in' . . . The
human tendency is found in all of
us . . . three types of humans are
particularly involved—o f f i c i a 1 s,
newsmen and the newsman audi-ence
. . . All are human . . . All
government officials have a vested
interest in apparent success in their
jobs . . . While, for some real suc-cess
is desirable, all will settle for
a public which thinks there is suc-cess
. . . When real success is being
attained, there is no problem. But
when officials try to create favor-able
public attitudes when success
is absent, danger signals should be
noted. Officials will try to manip-ulate
information about their ac-tivities
at all times, but especially
when they are image-building. This
manipulation in times of stress can
take three forms: 1. the release of
whatever good news is available, 2.
the suppression of bad news, 3. the
release of less than truthful infor-mation
deliberately designed to
shift attitudes from problems and
to gloss them over . . . Officials
will find and use power to try to
make sure their positions are not
destroyed. This human tendency of
18 ESC QUARTERLY
the official is something like the
animal tendency to protect its nest
—when outside threats occur, re-action
is immediate, and it can be
severe.
Dean Adams said the coming
struggle is over access to informa-tion.
Many of the public and much
of government officialdom attack
the news media and are hostile to
reporters, and perhaps to govern-ment
public information officers.
"We are being attacked because we
report violence," said Dean Adams,
"and because we are the carriers of
bad news." The Media are caught
between the Silent Majority who
say the news dispatches are rabble
rousing distortion, and the noisy
minority of violent people them-selves
who call the news media
tools of "The Establishment." Dr.
Adams warns we must realize that
"There is no strong element sup-porting
the news media in our so-ciety
today—except the news media
themselves." We have nowhere to
turn for help," said Dean Adams.
"We have to provide our own cure."
The newsman, said Dr. Adams,
must have access areas that were
heretofore neglected. He needs ac-cess
to the active minority. He re-quires
access to understanding of
the goals of that group. He needs
access to the minds of the reactor
—
those who will rebel against
change; those who want gradual
change; those who want revolution-ary
change.
Increased access to news will give
both the public and the power
structure leaders better understand-ing
about the forces struggling for
dominance in our society.
Manipulating the news could do
a disservice to our institutions and
to our State. We, as information of-ficers,
must help to excavate the
facts, to switch on the light in dark
places.
We should be represented in the
high-level conferences when any
policy is shaped that may subse-quently
be subject to public dis-closure;
if we are not there as par-ticipants,
or not represented, the
public relations effectiveness of our
departments and institutions is
thereby weakened, and the entire
institution sometimes placed in
danger. We are obliged to counsel
and convince our chiefs about the
hazards involved in the free play
of ideas in the public domain and
media, as well as the often greater
hazards in a hush-hush policy of
public information; and the even
more catastrophic hazards of an off-and-
on, inconsistent policy.
When we are caught in the
squeeze between managed news and
the goal of free access to informa-tion,
what should be our correct
posture? How enterprising and how
discreet should we be? Don't we
work for sincere and able admini-strators?
Don't they control our
pay? Do we not have prior loyalty to
them? Is it not true that they may
have broader perspective and deep-er
understanding and greater re-sponsibilities
than ive do? Yes, we
do. And they do. But they also have
a right to call upon our knowledge
and skills. They have a right to
command our services, not as yes
men, but as loyal and competent
communications specialists. We are
not serving them, nor our agencies
of government, nor the people of
the State properly when we fail to
take the initiative in accelerating
streams of information to the pub-lic.
If that is News Management, so
be it.
We in university information are
both fortunate and unfortunate. We
are unfortunate in that universi-ties
seem to be the main battle-ground
of the current social revolu-tion,
as we are war correspondents
on that field of conflict. But you
also have a stake in that in your
own departments of Government.
We are fortunate on campus, in
that there is a predisposition by
faculty and others to speak out for
fundamental liberties and to criti-cize
infringements on freedom of
speech, academic freedom, freedom
of the press. Yet, faculty members
are human, and many individuals
are victims of the tendency to be
secretive, abstruse or obscure. In
our own bureaucracies suspicious
gentlemen characterize news as
nothing but a sinister four letter
word.
We have an ace in the hole on
this university campus that you
can also profit by if you wish to
use it. This trump card is a writ-ten
statement of free access to in-formation,
a code of communica-tions
that serves as a yardstick for
seeking, getting and distribution
of information from the University
to the public. We can insist upon
principles and these principles are
respected.
What are these principles? They
are a part of a published code of
conduct in Chapel Hill. The official
University publication, The Record,
of the University states:
It is the policy and practice to
disseminate the news of the Uni-versity
without censorship. The
University adheres to the policy of
free access to information. This
means an open-door policy. Faculty
members, administrators and others
are urged to cooperate with mem-bers
of the news media, through the
News Bureau or directly in answer-ing
questions relating to activities
of the University. The frank and
uncensored access to the facts
—
whether or not they are favorable
to the University—gives confidence
in the forthright public relations
policy of the University.
It is helpful to have a published
policy statement. Impediments that
block our access to information are
not so difficult to overcome. How
effective is the policy, as stated?
Are the phrases high sounding but
toothless? Actually, the statement
is vital. Our work would be more
troublesome without it. The top of-
A. G. Pete Ivey is Director of
the News Bureau, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a
former newspaper editor, Nie-man
Fellow in Journalism of
Harvard University, and U. S.
Army public relations officer
during World War II.
A native of Rocky Mount, Ivey
is an alumnus of UNC with a
degree in journalism. He was a
newspaperman in Winston-Salem
from 1938 to 1954, except for the
Avar years and shortly after
—
working as a reporter, promotion
manager, columnist, editorial
writer and associate editor in
charge of the editorial page of
the Twin City Sentinel in Win-ston-
Salem. He was executive
editor of the Shelby Daily Star
in 1954-55.
During World War II, Ivey be-came
a public relations officer
for headquarters of Special Serv-ices
in Washington and New
York with the title of Chief of
Technical Information and the
rank of Captain.
He became Director of the
News Bureau in the University
of North Carolina in 1955.
Ivey is a member of the Amer-ican
College Public Relations As-sociation.
He is author of the
guidebook "The University and
Public News Media," and is a
member of Sigma Delta Chi
Journalism Fraternity. He is a
member of the Society of Nie-man
Fellows and was 1961 win-ner
of the Southern Regional
Education Board and National
Science Foundation award for
Distinguished Science Writing
and Interpretation. Ivey is editor
of The University Report, a news
sheet relating to the activities
of UNC.
He was a featured panelist at
the Institute of Government's
seminar for information officers
and spoke on "news manage-ment.''
ESC QUARTERLY 19
ficials of the University, from Presi-dent
Friday and Chancellor Sitter-son
to students and faculty have
defended and forwarded this prin-ciple.
So have the previous Presi-dents
and Chancellors. In a speech
eleven years ago to the North Caro-lina
Press Association meeting at
the annual Press Institute in
Chapel Hill, Chancellor William B.
Aycock re-affirmed the principle in
these words:
"We are fully aware that it is our
duty to share with the people,
through you and other media, the
work of the University. This in-cludes
our shortcomings and our
mistakes as well as our successes,
our hopes and our aspirations . . .
The only instruction by the admin-istration
to the News Bureau is to
find the facts, pass them on to you,
and let the chips fall where they
may."
Such confidence, such statement
of mission and assignment for the
News Bureau is at once gratifying
but also a bit awesome as our
bounded responsibility. It is as
though we have asked for freedom
and responsibility, and then it is
thrust upon us with the words, "All
right, you have asked for it. Now
do it, and do it right." It challenges
us to be honorable, to be ethical, to
be fair, to be accurate, to be a loyal
counselor as well as devil's advocate
and to walk where angels fear to
tread.
One key to opening a closed door
is a simple skeleton key that may
be called a Rule of Reason in Public
Information. If we grant that gov-ernments
of the people, by the peo-ple
and for the people are best
served by "open covenants openly
arrived at", then we should ask
that the first and initial response
to a request for information be this:
"Yes, of course. Let's see. Why not."
The Federal Government's Free-dom
of Information Act was passed
by the Congress in 1967. The law is
not always effective in giving free
access to information because of-ficials
can find loopholes in the
law to bottle up the news. But the
law is useful in providing better ac-cess
to public documents than ex-isted
before 1967. The guidelines ex-plaining
the law by Attorney Gen-eral
Ramsey Clark sets forth key
concerns of the act:
—that disclosure be the general
rule, not the exception. —that the burden be on the gov-ernment
to justify the withholding
of the document, not the person
who requests it. —that individuals improperly
denied access to documents have a
right to seek injunctive relief in
the courts.
The attorney general's statement
about the burden of justification
posits the main point. The reporter,
or the public information officer,
should not have to apologize for
asking the question, or explaining
his presumption in digging for
facts. Rather, the one who holds
the information ought to be the
one who must explain, and justify,
why hard-to-get information is be-ing
withheld.
A permissive regulation helps
him to overcome the innate human
instinct to dive into a secret.
We must appeal to man's higher
nature, developed over centuries of
civilization. We must give him
rules to work by that will promote
freedom of information and good
government.
Besides these general principles,
there are special techniques for ap-proaching
reluctant news sources.
We must first understand the
rationale, for executive sessions, for
off-the-record comments, for refus-ing
to give legitimate facts. Rea-sons
often given can be successfully
countered in the public interest: —Presence of reporters will in-hibit
the discussion; yet the pre-sence
of reporters may make the
discussion more responsible. —Publicity gives information that
is premature in its development;
yet doesn't the public have the
right to be in on the conception of
an idea and to follow the progress
—
long before the fait accompli? —Reporters and cameramen in-terfere
with the dignity of the oc-casion;
yet dignity may sometimes
have to be sacrificed for the sake
of affording the public the facts
about what's going on behind closed
doors. And dignity may, at times, be
only pomposity in disguise. —Executive sessions protect per-sonalities;
yet it is well known that
personalities have been attacked
and good names ruined by closed-door
speakers who derogate others
behind a cloak of privy meetings in
decision-making committees.
What is the difference between
necessary management of the news
and mismanagement of the news?
Often it may be the way in which
we carry out our assignments. We
manage the news when we:
1. Send out a release, sometimes
called a handout.
2. Call a press conference.
3. Answer questions put to us by
the press or broadcasters.
4. Notify media of impending
events which they may be interest-ed
in covering.
5. Call editorial writers and offer
them background.
6. Write clearly, in a way that
captures attention and informs.
7. Offer an exclusive.
8. Take a reporter to lunch or of-fer
him a drink or a cigar.
9. Speak to him off the record.
10. Exercise editorial judgment
in selecting what news goes out.
These are acceptable manifesta-tions
of news management.
We mismanage the news when
we:
1. Withhold essential information.
2. Tell a lie, or a half truth, or a
half lie.
3. Call a press conference and
have only a statement to make with
no opportunity to ask questions.
4. Play favorites among the news
media representatives.
5. Fail to notify the media when
big events are impending.
6. Plead with high brass of the
media for space, time, placement.
7. Encouraging sources say "no
comment".
8. Threatening a reporter, or go-ing
over his head.
9. Altering news stories to give
less than adequate information,
whether for purposes of abbrevia-tion
or for angling the news.
10. Fail to be sufficiently aggres-sive
in digging for news.
What is your own personal score
or report card for effectiveness in
handling your job as a government
public information officer? Check
off your reaction to these ques-tions:
A—Do your officials sometimes
hide news and make you the goat,
the cushion of non-communication
wherein you suppress news, delay
it, rather than expedite it? If so,
you are less than effective in your
job and of little service to your in-stitution
or department.
B—Do you participate in the in-ner
councils when policy is being
made that ultimately will be in the
public domain? If not, you are less
effective in your job than you ought
to be, and you are not serving your
department to the maximum desir-able
degree.
C—Do you know more about your
agency or institution than anyone
else? If not, you are less effective
than you should be.
D—Would you equivocate, or tell
a lie, to your boss or to the press
in order to protect yourself or your
institution from criticism? If so,
you misunderstand the principles
and ethical standards by which you
should work.
E—Is your batting average for
news published and broadcast pret-ty
good? Do the editors say you're
giving them too much? Do they
have confidence in vour veracity?
(See IVEY, Page 25)
20 ESC QUARTERLY
"The belief that news springs
from some mysterious pure
and undefiled source, and can
be caught in its pristine state
by a knightly journalist, is a
myth right out of a journalistic
Camelot."
"The First Amendment presup-poses
that right conclusions
are more likely to be gathered
out of a multitude of tongues
than through any kind of au-thoritative
selection. To many
this is, and always will be,
folly; but we have staked upon
it our all."
From The Book
EFFECTIVE
PUBLIC RELATIONS
written by
Scott Cutlip
and
Allan Center
I his tussle for men's minds be-comes,
in the final analysis, a battle
of communication and censorship
. . . Just as communication repre-sents
a positive effort to change or
conserve existing opinions through
the transmission to understandable
symbols, censorship represents a
negative effort to influence opin-ions
by suppression of what per-sons
see, read, or hear. Opinions
can be affected by what one does
not know as much as by what he
does know. Opinions based on no
facts, part of the facts, or all of the
facts are likely to be quite different.
Thus the tool of censorship is used
to create or obliterate an individ-ual's
opinions. This is artificial cen-sorship.
But there is another kind
of censorship—natural censorship
effected by the barriers of physical,
psychological, and semantic dis-tance
and difference. Artificial cen-sorship
is deliberately invoked for
a definite purpose. Natural censor-ship
derives spontaneously from
the environment or organized so-ciety.
Arthur Krock, chief Washington
correspondent for the New York
Times for many years, put his fing-er
on the nub of this conflict be-tween
the press and the govern-ment
publicist when he wrote:
Every American government is
in a contest with the newspapers
as to which shall be the first to
reveal plans and actions. The gov-ernment—
being composed of po-liticians
anxious to win public
favor and succeed themselves
—
naturally wants to make its own
announcements. It wants to dish
up its record with the most palat-able
sauces of publicity because it
depends for ratification and ap-proval
on public opinion and on
the Congress which supposedly,
reflects that.
The newspapers, on the other
hand, have precisely the opposite
duty. Their function is to keep
the public constantly informed of
trends and projects leading to
plans and acts so that the demo-cratic
processes may be exercised
to the full and nothing momen-tous
be swiftly consummated on
political action before the public
can realize what is going on, and
why and wherefore . . . All ad-ministrations
at Washington
within recent memory have con-stantly
set guards over the sour-ces
of news . . . All politicians re-sent
the freedom of the press
when events are going against
them.
NEWS MANAGEMENT IN
GOVERNMENT
(Salient Thought on the Subject
from Government and Media Ob-servers)
The Government and the Press,
by Louis M. Lyons, in Reporting
the News
There is a natural conflict of in-terest
between government and the
press; any administration seeks to
put its best foot forward in the
public view, and the press insists
on uncovering both feet. In war the
government asserts the right of
censorship. But cold war and
atomic secrecy imposed an era of
security, classification and execu-tive
order which put varying de-grees
of restraint on the "full dis-closure"
which the press tradition-ally
holds as its function. The gov-ernment
handling of the Cuban
crisis of October 1962 brought to a
head the issue of what correspon-dents
had come to criticize as "man-agement"
of the news.
Clark R. Mollenhoff*—"Managing
the News," Harold Cross Memorial
Lecture, 1962
The Cuban crisis resulted in one
of the most dramatic examples of
the high-level handout. For several
days, our knowledge and our cover-age
were largely limited to the facts
that were fed to us through the
Pentagon, the State department and
the White House . . . Assistant Sec-retary
of Defense Arthur Sylvester
frankly admitted that the Kennedy
administration engaged in almost
total management of the news in
those days of crisis . . . (Many edi-tors
feel) that the Sylvester direc-tive
will have the potential for
shutting off legitimate dissent on
policy matters that have nothing to
do with national security . . . Are
we now to assume that we have
finally found that infallible team
composed of men who will know
instinctively what is best for us . . .
It is certainly handout collecting
of the worst kind when reporters
or editorial writers accept errone-ous
conclusions that are whispered
by an administration.
*Mr. Mollenhoff, formerly a cor-respondent
for the Cowles public-ations
now is a special press coun-sel
adviser to President Richard
ESC QUARTERLY 21
Nixon. Following the President's
speech on his Vietnam Policy Nov.
3, 1969, and subsequent criticism of
television and the press for an-alysis
remarks made following the
President's speech, Mollenhoff said
that Vice President Agnew's speech
critical of the media was developed
by various White House aides." Mr.
Mollenhoff added: "if you are ask-ing
me 'does it reflect the Admin-istration's
views', the evidence is
abundant that it does."
Richard Dudmon of the St. Louis
Post Dispatch—"P.I.O.: Natural
Enemy"
Some of the complaints about
managed news are by reporters
who seem to hold the naive belief
that government Public Informa-tion
Officers have the job of pro-viding
information to the press.
Actually, their work is to promote
the good and conceal the bad and
put the best possible face on all
news concerning their agency.
They are natural enemies of news-papermen,
and any other assump-tion
is a dangerous delusion.
John L. Steele—Time Magazine
Bureau Chief, Washington, D. C.
"Look at the Product"
There is entirely too much wail-ing
at the wall on the subject of
press freedom and the so-called
"management" of the news. I am
disturbed lest newsmen become so
obsessed with this subject that they
forget their own jobs, that of "man-aging"
to tell the news in a mean-ingful
way. I have found that gov-ernmental
news policies have not
inhibited us to any great degree,
and I find important sources some-what
more available than at certain
times in the past.
Julius Duscha—The Washington
Post—"Hard, Unglamorous Work"
It has always been the job of pub-lic
relations men, whether they
work for the government or for
private industry, to manage the
news. I think Washington needs
fewer reporters who go around
bleating about the management of
the news and more reporters who
are willing to do the hard, unglam-orous
work of digging out the news.
Despite all of the reporters who are
in Washington, the city is actually
poorly covered. The reporters tend
to swarm to the most glamorous as-signments
. . . There is little day
to day coverage . . . and even the
coverage of the big stories often
consists of duplicating stories re-gurgitating
the obvious.
David J. Kraslow
—
Los Angeles
Times—"National Security Fibs"
It is one thing to speak the magic
words, "national security", and then
tell the citizens nothing. It is quite
another to tell them something ain't
so, when you know it is so. And
then, when what happened becomes
painfully obvious, you explain you
had to fib for the sake of national
security. The "you", of course, is
the national government, or any
agency or official thereof.
We ought to be raising hell about
doctored news, not managed news
... If it's all right for government
to lie sometimes, the students ask,
how can the people know when the
government is not lying? ... I
might say that the presidential
press conference can be a most use-ful
method of helping to keep an
administration honest in its hand-ling
of news.
John J. Lindsay
—
Newsweek—
"No Problem for the Real Report-er"
Those who are content with hand-out
reporting are those who bleat
the loudest when they get their ears
pinned back by enterprisers. Man-agement
of the news is going to be
with us forever. I think there is
less of it now than four years ago.
Judge Learned Hand—U.S. vs.
Associated Press
The First Amendment presup-poses
that right conclusions are
more likely to be gathered out of
a multitude of tongues than
through any kind of authoratative
selection. To many this is, and al-ways
will be, folly; but we have
staked upon it our all.
John Hohenberg — Columbia
School of Journalism—in "The
News Media"
"Credibility gap," like its fore-runner,
"news management" (has
become) a part of the American
idiom . . . All Presidents and most
Secretaries of State have managed
the news, some skillfully and others
poorly ... In the case of three
Presidents . . . Cleveland, Wilson
and Franklin D. Roosevelt . . .
serious illnesses were deliberately
concealed from the public . . . There
are many in government who neith-er
understand the function of the
news media nor care to risk talk-ing
with correspondents even when
they are authorized to do so . . .
news management is a legitimate
and often a necessary part of the
orderly processes of government.
The belief that news springs from
some mysteriously pure and unde-filed
source, and can be caught in
its pristine state by a knightly
journalist, is a myth right out of a
journalistic Camelot.
Dean John Berry Adams, UNC
School of Journalism—"Access to
News"
Access will soon be a problem
far beyond the present concern. The
future of this country will depend
on the extent to which newsmen
adapt to the news needs. Newsmen
lead public opinion—or they can . . .
We (of the news media) are being
raked over the coals because we re-port
violence. We, in fact, are being
charged with causing violence. We
badly need to re-educate the Amer-ican
people about what a press is
supposed to be—and in a real sense,
we have to re-educate ourselves. We
are being attacked because we re-port
violence—we are the carriers
of bad news. The silent—now not
so silent—are calling us rabble
rousers—they say our coverage is
distorted, unfair, and too pleasing
to the violent minorities . . . The
violent are calling us tools of the
establishment, advocates of status-quoism
. . . There is no strong ele-ment
supporting the news media in
our society today—except the media
themselves. We have nowhere to
turn for help. We have to provide
our own cure . . . We must expand
our horizon. I don't mean we should
print only good news. That is worse
than printing only bad news. A
newsman should spot trends and
cover them, spot injustices and re-port
it . . . The newsman needs to
have access to areas previously of
no concern—to the active minority
—access to understanding of the
goals of that group. He needs access
to the minds of the reactor—those
who will rebel against change
those who want gradual change
—
those who want revolutionary
change.
Report No. 186, Columbia School
of Journalism—The Access to Fed-eral
Records Law
The Freedom of Information Act
(1967) provides that every agency
shall publish in the Federal Reg-ister
for the guidance of the public
information concerning where rec-ords
can be seen, from whom they
are to be obtained, and the condi-tions
under which they may be in-spected.
Agency records shall be
made available promptly upon re-quest
... If any agency or employee
refuses access to records not except-ed
in the statutes, the agency may
be enjoined by the U.S. District
Court fr

r5
/
>Z
HOLT
North Carolina State Library
Raleigh
n. a
Doc.
VAVOULIS
HODGES
OETTINGER
WAYNICK
Hk
HERBERT
CHAIRMAN'S
COMMENTS
Henry E. Kendall
Chairman
N. C. Employment
Security Commission
KENDALL
None of us are so wise that we cannot gain know-ledge
from others. In any period of a year, em-ployees
of the Employment Security Commission
have the opportunity and good fortune to listen to
people who are authorities in their professions, and
also to individuals dignified by years of public
service.
We have published in this edition of the ESC
Quarterly a number of major addresses given to
Commission employees at meetings of the North
Carolina chapter of the International Association of
Personnel in Employment Security, an organization
of perhaps 800 members. Abbreviated as IAPES, the
international group lists members from all states
and several foreign countries, and members are
persons engaged in public employment service work
and unemployment insurance activities.
Luther Hodges, Jr., the impressive young official
of the North Carolina Bank and chairman of the
N. C. Manpower Development Corporation, was
keynote speaker of a 1970 IAPES function and his
remarks, which display considerable insight into
the needs of the impoverished, begin a series of
reprints of speeches we consider noteworthy.
If we excluded from this edition the remarks
made by the venerable Capus Waynick and his
former co-worker May Thompson Evans, we would
be remiss, because these two public servants were
the initial directors of the State Employment Serv-ice
when it began in the mid-thirties, and both
temper their speeches, printed on pages 12 and 14,
with reminiscence.
Statesman, diplomat, politician and legislator,
Capus Waynick left his retirement home in High
Point for a day's visit in Chapel Hill to speak before
the IAPES annual two-day institute held at the
Institute of Government, and Mrs. Evans journeyed
from Washington, D. C, to make her appearance.
Also included in this edition of the Quarterly are
speeches by two men who have no association with
the State Employment Service, but they are expert
in their field, which is journalism, and we have
printed speeches they made before the first and
rather unique seminar for state and local govern-ment
public information officers. They spoke on
"management of government news."
Elmer Oettinger, editor, playwright, holder of
four degres including a PhD in English, gives his
views on news management on page 17. Accom-panying
his article is an address by diminutive
Pete Ivey, longtime newsman and Director of the
University of North Carolina News Bureau.
ESC QUARTERLY
TH E
ESC QUARTERLY
Volume 26, No. 3-4, 1969
Issued at Raleigh, N. C, by the
EMPLOYMENT SECURITY COMMISSION
OF NORTH CAROLINA
Commissioners
Billy Earl Andrews, Durham; Charles L. Hunley,
Monroe; James W. Seabrook, Fayetteville; Henry
E. Kendall, Raleigh; Harold F. Coffey, Lenoir; R.
Dave Hall, Belmont; Samuel F. Teague, Raleigh.
State Advisory Council
Public representatives: Sherwood Roberson, Ro-bersonville;
Mrs. W. Arthur Tripp, Greenville.
Employer representatives: Mrs. M. Edmund Ay-cock,
Raleigh; Joseph D. Ross, Jr., Asheboro;
G. Maurice Hill, Drexel. Employee representa-tives:
Melvin Ward, Spencer, AFL, and H. D.
Lisk, Charlotte, CIO.
HENRY E. KENDALL Chairman
R. FULLER MARTIN _ Director
Unemployment Insurance Division
ALDEN P. HONEYCUTT Director
State Employment Service Division
H. E. (Ted) DAVIS Editor
Public Information Officer
Sent free upon request to responsible individuals,
agencies, organizations and libraries
Address: E.S.C. Information Service,
P. 0. Box 5S9, Raleigh, N. C.
The Employment
Security Commis-sion
administers
two major State
programs — Un-employment
In-surance
and the
State Employ
ment Service. The
Employment Ser-vice
provides ex-pense
free job
placement to ap-plicants
through 60 local offices of the Commission.
Unemployment insurance covers approximately
1,600,000 workers in North Carolina, providing them
with benefit payments in case of involuntary unem-ployment.
The Unemployment Insurance program is
supported by payroll taxes contributed by approxi
mately 43,000 Tarheel employing companies, firm!:
and corporations. The Commission has operatec
since the mid '30's when it was established by the]
General Assembly as the Unemployment Compensa
tion Commission.
Before the International
Association of Personnel
In Employment Security
u
Give A Man A
Job Worth
Doing . . . And An
Honest Wage . .
."
A Speech By LUTHER HODGES, JR.
Chairman
North Carolina Manpower
Development Corporation
I find my topic today quite fas-cinating
. . . The Development and
Utilization of Our Human Re-sources
. . . While I did not choose
the title itself, I readily agreed to
speak on the subject, for it suggests
a chain of ideas which I would en-joy
exploring with you briefly.
To many people, the term Human
Resources is just a fancy way of
talking about plain, everyday peo-ple
... to those of us here today,
however, the term means people
who are, by some definition, un-developed
or under-developed . . .
unutilized or under-utilized . . . The
implication is that these people
can be helped . . . that they can
be developed and utilized . . . made
useful and, more importantly, made
to feel useful.
Who are they then and where
can they be found? . . . And what
can be done about them once they
are found? . . .
These people are not, first of all,
just the unemployed ... As the De-partment
of Labor measures such
things, we anticipate a 5 per cent
unemployment rate in 1970 . . .
While we can always debate wheth-er
or not the current rate is toler-able,
the important point is that
the unemployment rate does not
begin to define the problem ... In
North Carolina, for instance, per
capita income—the measure of what
wage earners average—is around
$3,600 annually . . . None of us here
would wish to live on that amount,
HODGES
but all of us can agree, I am sure,
that many North Carolinians who
are working are part of our under-developed
and under-utilized human
resources . . .
We have farmers who are living
a marginal existence on worn-out
tobacco plots . . . Mountain folks
eking out a bare subsistence . . .
People without skills or sufficient
education . . . Members of minority
races whose color works against
them . . . There are estimates that
the total number of these people
—
the so-called "universe of need" for
our many manpower programs
is in excess of one-half million,
That's here in North Carolina
alone . . .
What is to be done for these
people? . . . Well, the answer takes
many forms and many programs
but the many programs are certain-ly
very new . . . The first Manpower
Development Training Act is only
eight years old . . . And as you
know far better than I, it was not
many years ago when it was con-sidered
quite sufficient just to re-spond
to individuals who were prop-erly
motivated and who were re-ferred
to an employment office for
jobs which the employer saw fit
to list . . .
But heavy new responsibilities
have been given to the Employ-ment
Security Commission—to all
of you—as a result of the national
concern for our neglected human
resources ... In North Carolina,
the Manpower Development Cor-poration
was formed to help State
agencies like yours meet these chal-lenges
. . .
MDC was not equipped, nor were
we designed, to perform line func-tions
. . . Our goal is to develop
new programs, new techniques, for
full utilization of the State's human
resources . . . When we succeed,
we spin-off these programs and
techniques to line agencies like
yours ... Or like the Community
College system, with which we are
also working at the present time
... Or the Department of Con-servation
and Development ... Or
other agencies and organizations I
could mention . . .
But it's not my desire today to
discuss MDC's current programs . . .
Many of you are familiar with
them . . . And if you are not George
Autry and the staff will welcome
a future opportunity to discuss
them further.
As a dedicated member of our
Board, Col. Kendall has been of
great help in formulating our pol-icies.
And Alden Honeycutt has
been of inestimable assistance in
implementing them ... To both
these men we are continuingly
grateful . . .
What I do want to talk about
today is policy . . . National policy
and the way it affects State policy
. . . For it is at the policy level
that we must begin if the effort
to utilize and develop our human
resources in North Carolina and
the nation is to succeed . . .
We at MDC feel that we have
had a significant role in preparing
North Carolina for the age of man-power
development . . . We have
created some tools . . . We have
made some progress . . . We have
seen ESC and other State agencies
make much progress . . . Yet we
are convinced that the surface has
barely been scratched . . . And, as
a matter of fact, in the current
business slow-down, conditions are
in some respects worse than they
were a few years ago, for we are
encountering significant industrial
lay-offs . . .
What can be done? . . . Permit
me to comment on two aspects of
current national policy considera-tions
. . .
One policy change being consid-ered
includes three bills currently
undergoing hearings in the House
Select Labor Subcommittee . . .
There are significant differences
among the three—one of which
bears the stamp of the Nixon Ad-ministration
. . . But the consensus
is that whatever bill finally emerges
will substantially reform existing
manpower legislation . . . The key
to this reform is the placing of
more responsibility and more power
in the hands of the States . . .
ESC QUARTERLY
At the present time, manpower
programming originates at the fed-eral
level . . . The federal govern-ment
determines what kind of ef-fort
is going to be made across the
nation ... It establishes programs
such as the Neighborhood Youth
Corps, Mainstream, the Concen-trated
Employment Program, and
others . . . States, cities, public
and private agencies—all who wish
to participate—must fit their ef-forts
to preconceived federal pro-grams
. . .
There are some obvious disad-vantages
to the current policy . . .
The most obvious, and the most
telling disadvantage is the deaden-ing
of creativity at the local and
State levels . . .
What good does it do to come
up with a brilliant concept for uti-lizing
and developing human re-sources
when no funding can be
found? . . .
At the other extreme, the federal
programs—once established—tend
to fill out their quotes whether they
are useful or not . . . There seems
to be some law that says that pro-grams
tend to be used whether they
are any good or not—just as chairs
tend to be occupied in a business
office whether their occupants are
useful or not . . .
Another serious problem spawned
by this top-to-bottom method is a
form of programmatic split person-ality
... It is entirely possible
—
again, as you are all aware—to get
funding for a training program . . .
The teaching tools, the personnel,
the supportive components . . . And
then not be able to get stipend
money to support the trainees while
they are in the program . . .
The stipend money comes from
a different source . . . From the
MDTA allocation ... So a program
can be rich—even too rich—in most
of the necessary resources and yet
be totally unworkable for lack of
a far smaller sum of money that
simply can't be found in the proper
pot . . .
What all this suggests to me is
exactly what the new legislation,
by and large, proposes to change
namely, that federal appropriations
should be channeled directly to
the States through an appropriate-ly
designated State agency . . . That
this money come only when the
States come up with a workable
plan for attacking their manpower
problems . . . And that the States
have full freedom within their own
plan to put the dollars where they
will do the most good . . .
The Governor, or someone he
designates, would have real deci-sion
making powers under such a
ESC QUARTERLY
system . . . And I feel strongly that
this would be all to the good . . .
But unfortunately, this one change —while critical to our success in
the vital area of the Development
and Utilization of our Human Re-sources—
is not enough . . .
Unemployment itself is a prob-lem
and the projected unemploy-ment
of 5 per cent for 1970 is clear-ly
no solution . . . While some do
not consider 5 per cent or 4 million
unemployed a particularly startling
problem, we know that unemploy-ment
does not fall evenly on our
population . . . Unemployment is
directional and selective ... It
strikes at those at the bottom of
society—the day worker, the un-skilled
or semi-skilled worker, the
on-the-job trainee trying to pull
himself out of the trough of pover-ty
... In short, at the very people
we have identified as the under-developed
and under-utilized human
resource in our society.
It strikes most specifically in
America and in North Carolina at
the blacks—both men and women
—
at the poor, and at the young . . .
They are, literally, the last hired
and the first fired . . . Since there
is little or no unemployment at the
middle and upper levels of society,
a 5 per cent rate really means 25
or 30 per cent unemployment at the
lower levels . . . This means more
black people, more young people,
and more poor people out of work.
The question, then, is not how
much unemployment we can stand,
but whether America can afford to
tempt a worsening of the class and
race antagonisms which we have
seen flare up and ignite in our cities
in recent years . . .
There is another question ... It
is pretty much accepted knowledge
that the administration in Washing-ton
feels that a certain amount of
unemployment is a necessary tool
in the attack on inflation ... In
other words, a slowdown in our
economy and tight money inevit-ably
mean more people out of
work . . .
If this is so, does not the adminis-tration
. . . does not any adminis-tration
. . . bear a certain respon-sibility
for members of its society
who are thus rendered unemployed?
I think it does. And the gather-ing
support in Congress for some
new legislation on behalf of income
assistance is evidence that many
thoughtful men are convinced that
they have a share in such a respon-sibility
. . .
But income assistance . . . assist-ance
whether a man works or not
. . . does not seem to me to be the
answer . . . We are a work-oriented
society and we must remain so . . .
MDC's experience with the disad-vantaged,
the down-but-not-out, has
convinced me that the vast majority
of these people want to work . . .
They want to be productive, func-tioning
members of a society that
has some rewards for them and for
their families . . .
In my view it is inconsequential
whether government oAves anyone
a minimum level of support ... By
itself, this is not enough . . . What
a government as rich and affluent
as ours really owes its citizens is
a working chance ... a job they
need not be ashamed of . . . And I
am clearly not suggesting some
more WPA "make work" . . .
This country has never been lack-ing
in real tasks for its people to
perform . . . Our cities need restor-ing
and beautifying and humaniz-ing
. . . Our people need low-cost
housing . . . Our working poor need
transportation . . . Our rivers and
air need cleaning . . . Our mail
services need improving . . .
There are enough useful jobs,
skill producing jobs, to keep every
American of working age and work-ing
mind busy from now on . . . All
we need is the will in Washington
to see that such a policy is init-iated
. . .
Here, again, the States, which
have traditionally been the experi-mental
bellwethers for national pol-icy,
could have a major role ... If
federal funds to be used for man-power
by the States according to'
their own plans were greatly am-plified,
and if the States were en-couraged
to develop exciting, new,
local, regional and State-wide at-tacks
on environmental problems,
the job could be done . . .
Through such an effort, we might
literally end unemployment and al-so
attack our most serious public
problems in one stroke . . . Just
think of what we as a nation pay
now in unemployment compensa-tion
and welfare support, and then
the cost of any sweeping new pro-gram
will not seem so grand . . .
This would be, in my view, the
clearest and best possible utiliza-tion
of the under-utilized . . . The
best development of the under-developed
human resources of the
nation . . . We could give these in-dividuals
not only jobs, but skills
. . . new skills to answer some of
society's most pressing needs.
Give a man a job worth doing and
an honest wage and you will see
what this nation's human resources
j
will accomplish . . . We at MDC
j have seen what these individuals I
can do with more traditional jobs i
(See HODGES, Page 25)
ii
. . . withstood the test of time.
99
By GEORGE J. VAVOULIS
President, ICESA
During the course of my re-searching
for this discussion today,
I found that there is very little
official or unofficial source material
or documentation of the formation
and development of the Interstate
Conference of Employment Secur-ity
Agencies. What material I did
find was most enlightening. The
purposes of the organization are
pretty well documented in its Con-stitution.
Let me quote from Ar-ticle
II of the Constitution, under
the heading "Ohjectives":
"To improve the effectiveness
of unemployment compensation
laws and employment service
programs***,
"To foster a closer relationship
and the exchange of ideas among
the Administrators,
"To promote the study, develop-ment,
and use of proper and effi-cient
methods of adminstration,
"To encourage the cooperation of
the several Employment Security
agencies in the conduct of funda-mental
research into the basic
causes of unemployment***, to
determine in what fields employ-ment
opportunities are increas-ing,
and what types of industries
and trades are responsible for in-creasing
the hazards of unem-ployment,
having in view the
finding of new fields of employ-ment
and a greater stabilization
of existing fields of employment,
"Through study and research, to
propose new legislation, both
State and Federal, in the basic
field of employment security."
My research indicates that the
Constitution and Code were initially
adopted on October 20, 1937 on the
occasion of the first nation-wide
meeting of administrators. Amend-ments
to the Constitution and Code
have been made from time to time,
but the basic objectives remain
much as they were initially drafted.
You will note that "unemployment"
was a prime concern of those early
drafters, yet the "Objectives" re-main
currently of sufficient broad-ness
to cover the many new activ-ities
in which we have become en-gaged
in the past seven years.
The old saying, "Necessity is the
mother of invention", is certainly
true with respect to the formation
of the Interstate Conference. If you
think things are hectic now—and
they are—look back to 1937. Unem-ployment
compensation was the
legitimate offspring of a shotgun
wedding between the Federal gov-ernment
and the States. Under the
Social Security Act, which was
passed in 1935, each State was re-quired
to pass an unemployment
compensation law which would
meet Federal standards, and obtain
the necessary Federal approval
prior to January 1, 1937. In many
States this called for a special ses-sion
of the legislature. Draft legis-lation
which would meet Federal
standards was furnished to the
States, and most of the State legis-latures
accepted and adopted such
legislation with little or no change
to launch their initial unemploy-ment
compensation programs. In
Minnesota, and in several other
States, this legislative action was
taken on Christmas Eve of 1936,
with the appointed U. C. Adminis-trator
personally carrying the en-acted
bill to Washington to insure
timely approval. Since that time,
the several States have amended
their initial bill until there remains
little, if any, resemblance to the
draft legislation so hurriedly adopt-ed.
So, the confusion began! States
were called upon to initiate an en-tirely
new program in partnership
with the Federal government. Both
partners were asked to take un-precedented
actions—the Federal
partner to finance 100% a program
to be carried out entirely by the
States. Neither partner had any ex-perience
in this concept of coopera-tive
(and coordinated) action. Na-turally,
those were days of con-fusion.
Each partner needed and
sought the help of the other. In
such an atmosphere, the Interstate
Conference was born in the Fall of
1937. The States (and the Federal
government) had "muddled
through" most of the first year.
There had been hurried calls and
meetings to devise forms and pro-cedures
for collecting employer con-tributions
(taxes). Now, however,
in most States benefits were to be
paid for the first time beginning
in January, 1938. The moment of
truth was at hand! The number
of unemployed was tremendous.
Machinery must be established to
pay inter-state benefits, something
entirely new. How would coverage
be established for individuals who
worked in more than one State?
What about rules and regulations?
How would it be decided among
several jurisdictions (and who
would decide) that the rules and
opinions established in one State
would be binding in another? These
are seemingly elementary problems
now, but in 1937 they were new,
different, important, and even
grave.
It was clear that some vehicle
was needed to serve as an exchange
for ideas, solve problems of mutual
concern among the States as well
as to present uniformly the posi-tions
of the States in their negotia-tions
with the Federal partner. The
Interstate Conference, therefore,
consisted chiefly of unemployment
compensation administrators and
staff at the beginning. The work-ing
committee approach was used
to solve the problems of the States,
draft binding agreements on inter-state
coverage and benefits and
establish communication with the
Federal government. The Interstate
Benefit Payment Committee is an
example of the early cooperation
among the several States and with
the Federal government. The com-mittee
then, and still does, work out
the inter-state benefit payment pro-cedures
to which the States sub-scribe
and which the Federal gov-ernment
approves. So out of this
mass of confusion there came mut-ual
understanding and a mutual ex-change
of ideas which still exists.
The organization has withstood
the test of time and, in fact, has
grown and flourished in the thirty-three
years since its formation. By
1939, most of the States had formed
VAVOULIS
ESC QUARTERLY
employment security agencies re-sponsible
for administration of both
the unemployment compensation
and employment service programs.
The committee approach still exists
to work out mutual problems in
both programs and with the Fed-eral
government.
While the States were still en-gaged
in working out problems re-lating
to unemployment compensa-tion,
World War II was suddenly
upon us, bringing with it the Fed-eralization
of the Employment Serv-ice
under the emergency powers of
the President. The States soon be-came
aware of a move by the Fed-eral
government to take over the
total State operation. It was during
this time that representatives of
the Interstate Conference first ap-peared
before a congressional com-mittee
to give the States' position,
which included the philosophy of
the Social Security Act in giving to
the States the complete administra-tion
of the unemployment compen-sation
program. Since that time, the
Conference has been recognized by
the Congress as the spokesman for
the States. Our position has been
sought and given whenever legisla-tion
is being considered by the Con-gress
which affects our operations
—
both E S and U C.
While our purposes may differ to
some degree, there has always been
a cordial relationship with the In-ternational
Association of Person-nel
in Employment Security. We
appreciate the cooperative relation-ship
which has built up over the
years. Let me cite a recent example
of joint action and cooperation be-tween
the two organizations. That
is the Cooperative Research Pro-ject
"to determine the subjects of
study relevant to preparation in the
field of employment security". The
Interstate Conference Committee
on Training, chaired by the West
Virginia Administrator, Clem Bas-sett,
formed the Joint Committee on
Cooperative Research Projects,
bringing in representatives of IA-PES
and the Manpower Administra-tion
as well as the Interstate Con-ference.
The University of Cali-fornia
and the University of South
Carolina are engaged in the re-search
projects with the Joint Com-mittee.
Progress has already been
noted, and we expect much more
as the study progresses. I am sure
that more joint ventures will be
undertaken in the future for the
mutual benefit of both organiza-tions.
I shall foster this type of ar-rangement.
And what about tomorrow? What
will the role of the ICESA and the
IAPES be in the formulation of
ESC QUARTERLY
new manpower programs or poli-cies?
I think we are on the thres-hold
of an action as revolutionary
as that which initiated the entire
cycle in 1935-1937. I am speaking
about the Comprehensive Man-power
Act, which has been pro-posed
to the Congress. This Act will
bring about sweeping changes in
manpower delivery systems, and
the role which we as Employ-ment
Security Agencies will play
in them. Much of the direction and
flexibility will be the responsibility
of the individual states, and we as
the single agency with demonstrat-ed
expertise in this field, must lead
the way. That is tomorrow—an ex-citing
tomorrow.
We need each others' abilities and
strengths to be joined together
whenever possible to work coopera-tively
when the need arises. As in
1937 and the early years of the Con-ference,
the past seven years have
been hectic, confusing and, some-times,
frustrating. ICESA and IA-PES—
the administrators and the
employees—have worked together
to bring order out of chaos. I am
sure we will continue to do so if we
are to solve the still serious man-power
problems which face us as
we enter the 1970's. Your problems
are our problems. They must be
solved. You are assured that the
Interstate Conference stands ready
to work with you.
George J. Vavoulis is Presi-dent
of the Interstate Confer-ence
of Employment Security
Agencies, an organization in-cluding
membership of the
nation's state Employment
Security programs. He is the
administrator of the Min-nesota
agency. The speech,
which is reprinted here, was
given by Mr. Vavoulis before
the 18th annual institute of
the International Association
of Personnel in Employment
Security at the Institute of
Government, University of
North Carolina.
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Employers Can
Benefit By
Close Attention
To Unemployment
Insurance Law
By R. FULLER MARTIN
Director
Unemployment Insurance Division
Many employers do not under-stand
the experience rating system
used to determine the yearly un-employment
insurance contribution
(tax) rate and often ask what he
can do to keep his individual rate
from increasing or obtain a reduced
rate.
The "experience rating system"
is a plan by which employers are
taxed to support the payment of
unemployment insurance benefits
in direct proportion to the degree
of unemployment experienced by
their workers along with the po-tential
liability for the payment of
unemployment insurance.
The first step in the rate assign-ing
process is to compute the state-wide
Trust Fund ratio by dividing
the amount in the Trust Fund as of
August 1 by the total taxable wages
(payroll) for the fiscal year ended
June 30. The size of the ratio de-termines
which of the nine rate
schedules will be applicable to all
employers for the next calendar
year. This gives the potential lia-bility
as related to funds available
for the payment of unemployment
insurance on a statewide basis.
The next step is the computation
of each employer's individual ratio
of the balance in his experience
rating account as related to the
three preceding fiscal years taxable
wages. The employer's experience
rating balance is the total of all con-tributions
paid plus interest and
other credits to his account minus
all unemployment insurance bene-fits
charged to his account (under-scored
for emphasis). This gives
the individual employers potential
liability as related to the funds
available in the employers experi-ence
rating account for the pay-ment
of unemployment insurance.
The contribution rate is then as-signed
to each employer based upon
the fund ratio schedule (statewide)
and the experience rating formula
for each employer as set forth in
Section 96-9 (b) 3 c of the Employ-ment
Security Law of North Caro-lina.
The rate schedule for 1970 is
schedule G which is a lower sched-ule
than was applicable for 1969.
The average tax rate for all em-ployers
in 1960 was 1.6 percent and
the average rate for 1969 was 1.14
percent. The average rate for 1970
is expected to be lower. This does
not mean that every employer will
receive a reduced rate. The reduc-tion
of rates depends on what the
employer is doing to help himself
and at the same time help the Em-ployment
Security Commission of
North Carolina effectively admini-ster
the Unemployment Insurance
Program.
Over the years the Employment
Security Commission has been
blessed with efficient and effective
administrative and staff leadership.
The Commission has pursued a
moderate financial policy to main-tain
a reasonable relationship be-tween
benefit disbursements and
contributions receipts. Proposed a-mendments
to the law have been
submitted periodically to the Gener-al
Assembly to update the law in
keeping with the constant economic
changes in the state. The Account-ing
Department with the help of
the Field Representatives and Tax
Auditors in the field administer a
most effective tax collection pro-gram.
The Claims Department with
the help of the Claims Deputies and
Appeals Deputies have adjudicated
contested claims in a commendable
manner and every effort is made to
pay unemployment insurance to
only those who meet the require-ments
of the law.
In spite of all these factors the
Employment Security Commission
needs the cooperation and help of
each and every employer to im-prove
the administration of the law
and the results could very well re-sult
in a reduction in the employ-er's
contribution rate.
Basically the experience rating
system is predicated on the stabiliz-ation
of employment statewide and
by each employer. We all know,
however, in spite of the best selec-tion
and employment practices as
well as economic fluctuation, un-employment
is bound to happen.
Some, of necessity, will be laid off
or separated because of lack of
work. However, there is always a
number who quit or separate for
reasons other than lack of work.
The second group is the one that
presents the problems.
What can the employer do?
Separation Notices
When preparing a separation
notice (Form NCUI 502) to be
given to the worker, or upon re-ceipt
of a request from the local
Employment Security office, please
enter the facts as to the separation.
If it is a voluntary quit or dis-charge
for misconduct, check the
appropriate item and give an ex-planation.
Attending Hearings
If an employer receives a Notice
of Hearing before the Claims
Deputy or Appeals Deputy concern-ing
a claim in which he was the
last employer or employer with
whom the claimant refused work,
the employer should make every
effort to attend the hearing. Al-though
the employer may have
furnished information in writing,
the determinations are based upon
sworn testimony. Your sworn testi-mony
is essential for the deputy
to arrive at a correct decision.
Claimants who are disqualified or
held ineligible for a given period of
time are not paid benefits during
this period and the potential bene-fits
are reduced. Thus, no benefits
paid results in no benefits charged
to the employer's experience rating
account. A recent analysis reveals
that the employers are appearing
at hearings before the Claims
Deputy in less than 20% of the
cases.
Fraud Cases
The Commission uses all of the
funds and facilities available to de-tect
cases of fraud (claimants work-ing
while receiving benefits or mak-ing
false statements concerning
their claims). This requires a veri-fication
of weekly wages you paid
the claimant for the same weeks
during which unemployment insur-ance
was paid. Therefore, when an
employer receives a request for
these weekly wages, the form
should be completed as soon as pos-sible.
(We realize an examination
by you of payrolls in storage will
be necessary.) When a case of fraud
is established and the case is pre-sented
in court, the attendance and
testimony of an employer repre-sentative
is essential for a convic-tion.
Furthermore, if you have in-formation
concerning anyone who
is receiving unemployment insur-
MARTIN
ance while working or who is not
available for work, the employer
should notify the local Employment
Security Office.
Offers of Employment
When an employer receives a
Notice to Last and Base Period Em-ployer
of Claim Filed (NCUI 550),
he should read the explanation on
the reverse side. Particular atten-tion
should be given to the section,
'Get the Unemployed Back to
Work.' If the worker is desirable
and the employer has a job avail-able,
he should notify the worker.
If the worker refuses the job, the
employer should notify the local
office in which the claim was filed.
A hearing will then be scheduled
to determine if the claimant should
be disqualified.
Request for Non-Charging of
Benefits
When an employer requests the
non-charging of benefits, he should
keep in mind that the Commission
must decide solely from the employ-er's
statement on the form wheth-er
the quit was voluntary, without
good cause attributable to the em-ployer,
or the discharge was for
misconduct connected with the
work. This decision cannot be made
from the mere checking of an item
"Voluntary Quit" or "Misconduct."
A full statement of facts concerning
the circumstances that brought
about the separation is necessary.
Unless this is done, the forms will
be disallowed or returned for ad-ditional
information.
(See ATTENTION, Page 38)
ESC QUARTERLY
HOLT
VFW Official Says More Funds Needed
For Veteran Employment Programs
A Speech By COOPER T. HOLT
Executive Director, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Washington, D. C.
I am both honored and delighted
to be participating in this meeting
to express my organization's high
regard for work being performed
by the North Carolina State Em-ployment
Service for the veterans
of the Tar Heel State.
For a few minutes I would like
to talk with you about a matter
concerning my country.
The membership of the Veterans
of Foreign Wars is concerned with
the attitude of too many people
over the war in Vietnam. We are
fearful that too many people have
forgotten just why we are in Viet-nam
and we are resentful of those
who would, for reasons of political
expediency, or any other reason,
retreat from Vietnam no matter
what the cost. The Veterans of
Foreign Wars of the United States
believes that our cause in Viet-nam
is just and right and proper
and we intend to challenge loudly
and clearly those divisive elements
in this country which would back
down from the challenge of com-munism
and sell out our men on
the fighting front.
I say to you here today that it is
high time that some of our amateur
diplomats, armchair generals and
would-be presidents in our Nation
be reminded that their continuing
harsh and distorted criticism of
America's continuing stand against
aggression in Vietnam is harmful to
the success of our mission and to
the security of our nation.
It may not be their intention, but
these self-appointed experts of in-ternational
military and political
strategy are providing false hope
and misleading comfort to the
enemy. They—no less, and perhaps
even more than the so-called anti-war
demonstrators—are actually
helping to prolong the war rather
than to shorten it, as they so zeal-ously
claim is their objective. Their
expressions of dissent and protest
provide the North Vietnamese with
a reason to believe they can achieve
the victory our men in uniform are
denying them on the battlefront
through a split in our ranks on the
home front.
The divisive antics of the peace-niks,
beatniks and draft card burn-ers,
can perhaps be blamed on
ignorance or immaturity. It is dif-ficult,
however, to find any excuse
for the increasing tendency of cer-tain
members of Congress and other
elected officials to assume they
somehow have acquired a special
insight and wisdom which quali-fies
them to render better judg-ments
on policies and actions than
the Secretary of Defense, the Sec-retary
of State or the Commander-in-
Chief.
Never in the history of our na-tion
has there been a greater need
for National unity and support of
our constituted leaders. The with-holding
of traditional bi-partisan
Congressional support from the
President in the conduct of foreign
policy can only serve to undercut
his bargaining strength with our
enemies and diminish his stature
among our friends.
What we need to try now is a
pause in irresponsible dissent to
demonstrate our strength of pur-pose
and unity of spirit. President
Kennedy said "The cost of freedom
is always high but Americans have
always paid it. And one path we
shall never choose, and that is the
path of surrender or submission."
The path to a just peace is the
one where we present a unified
front to the enemy, so that he will
not fail to recognize the futility of
his aggressive course of action.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars,
therefore, calls upon our Senators
and Representatives to support our
fighting men in Vietnam and to
work for a just and honorable peace
in Vietnam.
In my travels around this great
country of ours, I have spoken to
ESC QUARTERLY
literally hundreds of returning
veterans at hospitals, separation
centers and veteran functions and
meetings. To a man, their chief con-cerns
have been three-fold—(1) em-ployment,
(2) housing, and (3) ed-ucation—
not increased compensa-tion
and pensions as some people
would like you to believe.
On behalf of the thousands of re-turning
veterans who have been
serviced by your local employment
offices in assisting these men in
the areas of job procurement, voca-tional
guidance and on the job
training programs, the Veterans of
Foreign Wars wants to commend
you for your valiant efforts in spite
of the many obstacles which have
caused road blocks in giving this
continued service.
The needs of the returning vet-erans
are great, and they are get-ting
greater due to their ever in-creasing
numbers. However, addi-tional
emphasis on newer concepts
and programs geared to assist the
disadvantaged are chipping away
at the funds of existing programs
for veterans. New or additional
funding has not been forthcoming
to implement these programs of as-sistance
to the "hardcore" unem-ployed
and underprivileged.
Resources are limited and prior-ities
seem to be given to these new-er
programs to the detriment of
older existing programs. This prob-lem
seems to be prevalent in the
Department of Labor where there
has been a failure to provide ade-quately
for the States to do a good
job on behalf of the veteran.
The moral seems to be you can-not
give quality service with an
inadequate budget.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars
has no quarrel with these programs
geared to assist the disadvantaged;
we realize that programs must
change with the social and eco-nomic
conditions of the time.
However, the V.F.W. is of the
firm conviction that so long as
Congress is of the stated opinion
that "veterans shall receive the
maximum of job opportunities" and
that this responsibility is ultimately
up to the State Agencies to admin-ister
these employment benefits,
then the V.F.W. strongly feels that
these so-called welfare programs
should not take precedence over
funds for veterans programs.
I am informed that as of Septem-ber
1969, there were approximately
406,000 veteran applications on file
in the 2,200 local offices of the state-federal
employment security of-fices
over the nation. Of this num-ber,
approximately 54,000 were dis-abled
veteran applicants. Further,
that the majority of these applic-ants
were World War II and Kore-an
veterans.
Over the country, according to
estimates available to us, 1,830,000
veterans made applications for jobs
at the local employment offices in
1968. They were placed in 1,163,-
500 jobs. Included in this group
were 156,000 disabled veterans. We
feel this to be an excellent record —but again, it could be better.
We are concerned, however,
from reports reaching us from our
employment committees and post
employment officers to the effect
that adequate service often is not
being made available to veteran ap-plicants
at local public employment
offices. This fact, together with an
anticipated one million discharged
Vietnam veterans returning to civil-ian
life in the current calendar year
raises severe questions in our
minds.
Originally provided for by the
Servicemen's Readjustment Act of
1944 (G.I. Bill) and appropriately
amended to include discharged vet-erans
of later conflicts by the Vet-erans
Readjustment Assistance
Act of 1952 and the Veterans Read-justment
Benefits Act of 1966, the
United States Department of Labor,
acting through its Manpower Ad-ministration
and the Veterans Em-ployment
Services and State Agen-cies,
administers programs design-ed
to provide job counseling, test-ing
and preference in referral to
available jobs for veterans and pre-ferential
treatment in local office
services for disabled veterans.
These services are carried on at
the local office level under the di-rection
of a local veterans employ-ment
representative designated in
each office. Statewide, as you know,
this program is functionally sup-ervised
by a Federal Veterans Em-ployment
Representative, such as
Marvin Burton and Lawrence
Britt.
Beginning in 1966, reports began
to reach our Headquarters from
veterans who felt they had not
been granted adequate services at
these offices and comments from
our employment chairmen and
post employment people to the
same effect. In checking with
local office managers and the na-tional
office of the Veterans Em-ployment
Service, we were faced
with an admission that the time of
the local Veteran Employment Rep-resentative
was being utilized in
emphasized crash and long range
anti-poverty programs. In the
V.F.W.'s view this problem could
best be solved by earmarking funds
within the Department of Labor
budget process to provide for Vet-erns
Employment Representative
positions at the local office level
and perhaps more important, the
issuance of regulations which would
guarantee and complement the
provision of adequate time for them
to perform their duties. Most cer-tainly,
with the increasing number
of veterans returning from Viet-nam
and Southeast Asia and an
apparent increasing workload of
older veterans (World War II and
Korea), my organization is serious-ly
concerned that these veterans
receive the benefits due them under
law and accordingly, have brought
this to the attention of the Assist-ant
Secretary of Labor for Man-power.
It is apparent that all new pro-grams
being advanced are still be-ing,
for the most part, financed
through the same source, namely,
the "Unemployment Insurance
Trust Fund." We realize that this
money can only stretch so far, par-ticularly
in view of the multiple
programs that have come into ex-istence
over the past few years, and
because of this fact, no effort has
been made by the Labor Depart-ment
to re-fund these programs
from other sources.
It is our feeling that it would be
a worthwhile venture to have the
U. S. Department of Labor and the
State Agencies explore the possibil-ity
of approaching Congress and re-quest
funds from General Revenue
to adequately finance the respon-sibilities
of employment service for
veterans.
Over 7 billion dollars in appropri-ations
are made available for the
use of the Veterans Administration.
Why not put a forthright petition
to the Secretary of Labor to expand
the funding of services to veter-ans?
As you are aware, approximate-ly
650 million dollars are poured
back to the States on a funding
basis for the use of the States to
operate their Employment Service.
At the same time, your duties and
responsibilities are increasingly
heavier; yet the level of funding
remains the same.
Consider the future when the
Vietnam conflict will be considered
over, and the returning servicemen
are increased almost overnight in
great numbers. Other agencies will
be affected but the heaviest of re-sponsibility
will be placed on your
mission
—
that of employment.
Now, if I may, I would like to
briefly comment on Senate Bill
1088, better known as the Veterans
Relocation and Assistance Act.
While the V.F.W. would certainly
ESC QUARTERLY
favor S. 1088 or any similar legisla-tion
to assist veterans seeking
meaningful employment, appren-ticeship
training or on the job
training, we note this "special"
employment, and relocation assist-ance
is available only to veterans
who are eligible for education and
training benefits under Chapter 34,
Title 38, U. S. Code, and who are
discharged on or after the effective
date of the enactment of the legis-lation.
We have certain reservations in
connection with S. 1088. First, the
V.F.W. has traditionally favored
comparable benefits for all war
veterans. As an example, when the
V.F.W. sponsored and supported
legislation, later known as the Vet-erans'
Preference Act of 1944, to
provide preference in Federal em-ployment
for World War II vet-erans,
we also included the same
preference for World War I veter-ans
who were veterans of a war 25
years earlier.
Such preference as S. 1088 would
provide, could well be considered
as discriminatory against World
War II and Korean War veterans,
as well as Vietnam War veterans
discharged before the Bill's passage.
The V.F.W. believes that unless
the proposed legislation has "teeth"
it might well be administered as an-other
anti-poverty program by the
Department of Labor. In other
words, it would be so much "lip
service" insofar as veterans are con-cerned,
as has been the V.F.W.'s ex-perience
with respect to other em-ployment
programs administered by
the Department.
As an example, on August 14,
1967, the President instructed the
Secretary of Labor, in cooperation
with the Secretary of Defense, to
provide individual and personalized
employment assistance to all re-turning
Vietnam Era veterans. The
Department of Labor accepted the
assignment, apparently in good
faith, and passed it along to the
State Employment Agencies with
no additional funds or personnel,
but with the tremendous responsi-bility
of seeking out all recently
discharged veterans to counsel
them individually concerning their
employment problems and job
training needs. Several states re-quested,
but were denied, addition-al
funds and personnel to properly
administer the program. Yet while
this personalized employment serv-ice
to veterans, as requested by the
President, was being denied a sub-stantial
number of State Employ-ment
Service employees were as-signed
the specific responsibility of
assisting certain economically dis-advantaged
individuals, a group
which includes very few veterans.
The V.F.W. understands the need
for employment programs to as-sist
the economically disadvantaged
and, to a large degree, we support
them. However, the V.F.W. is op-posed
to any individual or group of
individuals receiving employment
counseling and job placement pre-ference
in the State Employment
Service over and above the war
veteran who is entitled to receive
preference by law.
The V.F.W. is fearful that the De-partment
of Labor would set up a
special class of veterans, the dis-advantaged,
by administrative ac-tion
and turn the proposed legisla-tion
into another anti-poverty pro-gram.
Even though this proposed
legislation is not specifically limit-ed
to assisting disadvantaged re-turning
Vietnam Era veterans, we
are concerned that the Department
of Labor might turn it toward that
direction administratively, exactly
the same way the Department has
administered the Manpower De-velopment
and Training Act of
1962. When Congress was consider-ing
the 1962 Act, which was favored
by the V.F.W., it was our under-standing
that the program was not
conceived as primarily for the dis-advantaged.
However, the Depart-ment
of Labor now requires the
local public employment offices to
reserve 65 percent of MDTA job
training openings for "disadvant-aged"
applicants, which excludes
most veterans. By virtue of Resolu-tions
of our 1968 and 1969 National
Conventions, we have urged the
Department of Labor to rescind this
requirement and permit full consid-eration
of any veteran for MDTA
training openings, regardless of the
veteran's economic status. To date,
no action has been taken by the De-partment
of Labor.
The V.F.W. does not believe that
any group of veterans should be
singled out for super job training
preference over other war veterans;
nor do we, in view of past ex-periences
with the Department of
Labor, believe that S. 1088 without
amendments would be any more
than mere "lip service" for the vet-eran
who is not disadvantaged.
We of the V.F.W. have always
viewed this employment program
as an excellent example of success-ful
State-Federal cooperation. Its
continuance is basic to the pro-vision
of law, namely, that "vet-erans
shall receive the maximum
of job opportunity in the field of
gainful employment", and over the
years, the V.F.W. has carefully re-viewed
the Veterans Employment
Service budget requests and feel
that they are moderate and not
equal to the occasion and have so
informed the Congress. However,
our concern here is that this out-standing
service to veterans not
be allowed to dissipate, because of
competition from other programs,
fine and as appropriate as they may
be.
Unemployment
Payments To
Vets Increase
Separations from the armed
forces in North Carolina during the
first three months of 1970 have in-creased
over the same period of
1969, causing a 50 percent jump in
unemployment insurance payments
to ex-servicemen, reports the N. C.
Veterans Employment Service.
Unemployment insurance bene-fits
to ex-servicemen, which are
paid by the State with federal
funds, increased from $244,500 dur-ing
the first quarter of 1969 to
$354,200 in the same quarter of
1970.
Jobless benefit payments have
increased because a higher propor-tion
of persons being discharged
from the military are filing claims.
The duration of payments is some-what
longer, and the average week-ly
benefit amount is higher. In
North Carolina the maximum pay-ment
is $50 a week.
Figures from the Veterans Ad-ministration
disclose that an aver-age
of 3,000 veterans are being dis-charged
each month from North
Carolina military bases.
Fort Bragg and Camp Lejuene
are two of the nation's major sep-aration
centers. Under federal law
military personnel have unemploy-ment
insurance available if they
cannot find jobs after discharge.
The program is administered in
North Carolina by the Employment
Security Commission.
According to a President's com-mission
assigned to study the Viet-nam
veteran, about 60 percent of all
persons being released from mili-tary
service enter the civilian labor
market looking for jobs. Most have
little difficulty applying skills learn-ed
in the military to civilian occu-pations.
In North Carolina the average
length of unemployment experienc-ed
by a discharged veteran is nine
weeks, a favorable comparison to
the national figure of 13 weeks.
10 ESC QUARTERLY
Immediate Job Information Provided By
New Placement Program in Winston-Salem
Reprinted From The Winston-Salem Journal
A job bank that will match job
seekers with openings will start
here Monday, and officials hope it
will rekindle the city's sputtering
fight against unemployment.
It will be the newest of about 35
job banks in the country, the only
one on the East Coast between Bal-timore
and Atlanta and the only
one in the country that is not com-puterized.
It is not strictly an antipoverty
effort, though it is expected to be
a boon to the Concentrated Employ-ment
Program.
In 1967, Mayor M. C. Benton's
Employment Resources Committee
recommended that a central clear-ing
house be established to provide
instant information on available
jobs in the city and the people who
could fill them. The job bank is it.
Local Commission
Ben Johnson, the Employment
Security Commission's area super-visor,
said the bank will not provide
new or increased services, just bet-ter
service. It should benefit em-ployers
as much as the unemployed,
though its emphasis is on job place-ment.
Twenty-two workers in the local
commission will operate the bank,
under the direction of Johnson and
Grover Teeter, local commission
manager.
It is a government project. Sim-plified,
it works something like this:
Employers with job openings call
a special job bank number—725-
0455—and give all pertinent in-formation
about the positions, quali-fications
needed, experience requir-ed,
hours and salary, and specify
how many people they want to
interview.
Meeting Arranged
Job orders are typed, coded, sep-arated
into 10 occupational classi-fications,
reproduced, encased in
plastic coverings and arranged in
notebooks.
Copies go to seven bank inter-viewers
and three Concentrated
Employment Program workers. All
job orders placed with the employ-ment
program will be channeled
to the bank.
Interviewers talk with job appli-cants.
After determining what an
applicant is qualified to do, the in-terviewers
try to find a suitable
job in the book.
Interviewers arrange a meeting
between the applicant and the em-ployer.
If the applicant has all but
one or two of the employer's quali-fications,
the interviewer will try
to persuade him to give the ap-plicant
a chance. If he will, the
rest is up to the applicant.
Only the specified number of ap-plicants
will be sent to an employer.
When a job is filled, it will be taken
from the book. Books will be up-dated
daily.
Obviously, the bank will be use-less
unless businessmen use it.
Johnson and Teeter expect the sev-eral
hundred companies which nor-mally
use the commission to con-tinue
feeding their requests to the
bank. They also expect many new
firms to use it after its reputation
is established.
To insure the bank's contact with
business, three workers will visit
businessmen regularly. The employ-er
services representatives will offer
the commission's free services (job
market information, job studies,
absentee studies) and try to get
job listings.
Teeter said the commission now
lists between 30 and 40 percent
of the city's available jobs. He be-lieves
the job bank will do much
better. The bank probably will have
between 500 and 600 jobs during
its first weeks, he estimated, but
that figure should increase to thou-sands
in time.
The bank will solicit and list any
job, including professional and tech-nical
ones, which is legal and does
not violate civil rights laws. It will
try to find work for anyone who
Interviewer Barbara Troll explains
Job Bank processes to interested ob-servers
during the Winston-Salem
formal opening of the unique job
placement program.
wants it, regardless of skill or back-ground.
There will be no charge.
Teeter and Johnson said the job
bank will end visits to business-men
by several different agencies.
The Concentrated Employment
Program is depending heavily on
the bank for jobs. While the bank
will not seek jobs expressly for the
program, Johnson said it should
turn up enough to give the pro-gram
a strong boost. This has hap-pened
in other cities, he said.
In addition, the employer ser-vices
representative will encourage
businessmen to lower job require-ments
to take on poor people.
The job books will be closely
guarded and only the employment
program and the commission will
have access to them. Later, John-son
said, other agencies may be
invited to join the bank.
Eventually, Johnson and Teeter
see the bank becoming the city's
prime source of manpower informa-tion
as well as the chief job place-ment
agency.
On hand to see Job Bank formally open were (L to R): Henry E. Kendall,
ESC Chairman; Mayor M. C. Benton of Winston-Salem; ESC Area Supervisor
Ben Johnson; Meade C. Lewis, the Mayor's assistant for manpower; and
local office Manager Grover Teeter.
ESC QUARTERLY 11
a
iJLill JLiOkJ
;ili
The nostalgia that I feel today
derives in part from memories of
the early days of the Employment
Service in this State and the per-sonnel
of it. But it derives in part
also from a consciousness of the
changes in society—the changes in
our political and economic systems
which have occurred in the last
few years.
Your program chairman asked me
to make the keynote speech on this
occasion and the occasion seems to
me to call for some reflection upon
the conditions of the past affecting
you, the conditions of the present
and as far as is possible, to those
of the future. I note that you adopt-ed
as your theme "Yesterday, To-day
and Tomorrow." In the course
of my remarks, I expect to pay
some attention to those changes in
our institution and our general so-ciety
to which I referred.
The key note is the basic note in
a musical composition. The keynote
speech is supposed to deal with the
principles upon which policy is
founded and upon policy itself. As
far as I know about your policy,
you have adapted it beautifully to
fit your assignment. I have no sug-gestions
of importance to make on
policy revisions.
What then should I say in the
keynote speech to you today? I
have decided for whatever value it
may be to you, to take a look at
the general conditions under which
you came into being, have function-ed
for a generation and are facing
a challenging future. In brief—the
past, the present and as much as is
possible, the future,
It may be truly said of you that
you are they who came out of great
tribulation. Thirty-six years ago, the
economic America was prostrate
and dreadfully afraid. The North
Carolina General Assembly met
that year with the banks closed
throughout the nation and had to
make a special provision to furnish
enough money to the members of
that General Assembly to pay their
expenses while they sought to
muddle through our particular sec-tor
of the disaster. Courage and
confidence were far from general
when a man so crippled physically
that he could not stand, stood up
and said, "We have nothing to fear
but fear itself" and called the peo-ple
to a concert of action to meet
inertia of the time.
There was less air contamination
then because there was little smoke
coming from industrial smoke
stacks and "Hoover Carts" emitted
no fumes.
When the President set up the
National Recovery Administration,
the man he placed in charge of it
declared that the great captains of
industry had become corporals of
disaster. Distressed property tax-payers
went on something like a
strike and the public schools began
to close. Unemployment was colos-sal.
War veterans were peddling
apples on city streets to eke out a
desperate living. Soup kitchens
were set up and bread lines form-ed.
It was then that the forerunner
of your Employment Service came
Capus Waynick, retired Ad-jutant
General of North Caro-lina,
directed the National Re-employment
Service in North
Carolina during and after the
depression. Considered to be one
of the most outstanding North
Carolinians of the century, he
served governors and presidents
during his 40 years of public
service.
Waynick was a member of the
State Legislature, chairman of
the State Highway Commission,
and organized the first N. C.
Health Education Institute. Way-nick
was campaign manager for
Governor Kerr Scott during the
late 1940's.
In the '50's President Harry
Truman appointed Waynick U.
S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, and
later, Ambassador to Colombia.
Governor Terry Sanford ap-pointed
Capus Waynick Adjutant
General and Commander of the
State's National Guard, and later
appointed him a mediator when
North Carolina experienced its
first racial disorders in the early
1960's.
In early life Waynick was edi-tor
of the Greensboro Daily
News, the Greensboro Record
and the High Point Enterprise.
into being. The National Re-em-ployment
Service was set up with
an overall director and 48 state di-rectors
to try to do something to
get some sort of jobs for the mil-lions
of hungry, jobless people. At
the insistence of the State Com-missioner
of Labor, the late Colonel
Ed Fletcher, I became Director for
North Carolina. Incidentally, Harry
Truman—destined to become suc-cessor
to Franklin D. Roosevelt as
President—was the director for Mis-souri
and was at a national conven-tion
of the Directors of the Nation-al
Re-employment Service in In-dianapolis
when I first met and
became acquainted with Mr. Tru-man.
We set up offices in all parts of
the State and our people met the
impact, the brunt of the great
masses of the unemployed who
were looking desperately for a
chance to get on some sort of pay-roll.
The jobless included many who
had been highly paid or even rich
before the break in economic con-ditions.
Now they were grateful
for a chance to get on some sort of
a payroll at which they could eke
out a living.
I am pleased that we have with
us here today the chief organizer of
the field forces at that time. I refer
to Mrs. May Thompson Evans,
now of Washington, D. C, wife of
a brilliant lawyer, W. A. Evans,
whom we also welcome today as a
guest. This distinguished couple
went on from the North Carolina
scene to important stations of serv-ice
in the nation's capitol. Both
have retired, Mr. Evans recently
as the highly honored Dean of the
Commissioners of the United States
Court of Claims. But in 1933, they
were as much victims of the depres-sion
as the rest of us and were
looking for some way to eke out a
living. It would be impossible to
overestimate the service Mrs. Evans
rendered in the crisis. Working for
a magnificent pay of $150 a month,
tirelessly for long and arduous
hours she drove over the State. She
and a fellow organizer succeeded
me as Director and I think her
work with the 1935 General As-sembly
deserves to have her rec-ognized,
may I say, as the "mother
of your organization." She not only
succeeded in a difficult undertaking
to get the service established by law
but proceeded with amazing skill to
promote professionalism in it and
I pause to introduce her who credit-ed
me with so many jobs that made
me think of a time when I was in-troduced
over in Durham to a club
and when the introducer got
through with a recital of my many
12 ESC QUARTERLY
jobs, I heard a man whisper to an-other,
"That guy's had a hell of a
time holding a job." I fear that my
beloved introducer was in error in
naming me as your first director.
As a matter of fact, your first di-rector
is here, Mrs. Evans. I am
glad the State owes a lasting debt of
gratitude to this woman who es-sentially
was the founder of your
organization.
Back then the highest paid em-ployee
of the State of North Caro-lina
had a $6000 salary and what
our underpaid teachers now receive
would have seemed incredible
abundance to us then. I'm glad to
note that some rather nice salaries
are being paid to the youth of the
Service. Maybe they should be in-creased,
I don't know.
Thus I have sketched briefly
that past of great tribulation out
of which your Service came. Per-haps
you need no appraisal from
me as to the present. You of the
Service have grown in number and
your job is a great one but your
professional skills have increased
to meet well the demands of a
period when unemployment haz-ards
have been unwritten to a sub-stantial
extent and workers are in
demand beyond supply in some
areas in our economic system, as
our nation recovering from disaster
has again become astoundingly pro-ductive.
The mobs of the present are no
longer jobless men and women re-sorting
to a bread line or a soup
kitchen and begging for work. They
are made up of those often well-financed
and highly privileged of
the economic and political systems
against which they march in pro-test.
A revolutionary mood exists
and it is spread and intensified by
self-elected leaders who believe they
have little to lose and much pos-sibly
to gain by radical changes in
society. The readiness of the com-mercial
media of communications
to spotlight the rioters is inspira-tion
to the wildest activists. We
have witnessed contempt for police
and the courts and for all disciplin-ary
and administrative authority
whether in the White House, on
university campuses or at city hall.
You go steadily and effectively on
with your work but generally the
disturbance is profound, as the
younger generation and some of
the old demand change.
What about the future? More in-timately
than most other profes-sionals
you are dealing with the
raw material of the future. Yours
are the problems of the worker and
the worker must determine largely
what the future shall be. How the
political and economic systems deal
with these problems probably will
decide our future.
The aboriginal American's labor
policy was very simple. Generally
the Indian let the woman do the
work while the man hunted, fished
and fought. The first peons in our
country established a policy that
also was both simple, functional
and spartan. It was enunciated by
Captain John Smith at Jamestown.
The dowdy Captain proclaimed that
those who wouldn't work, shouldn't
eat.
What industry did to keep work-ers
impoverished and subdued in-spired
Karl Marx, the German Jew,
to write "Das Kapital" some 120
years ago and to propose the scrap-ping
of private controls on the tools
of production. His appeal was to
the proletariat, condition of the
masses of which became no better
when a new industrial power of
Capitalism based on the use of
steam was greatly improved. City
slums readily replaced the some-what
more tolerable rural slums of
the era of handicrafting. Commun-ism
made little progress during
Marx's lifetime despite the fact
that he was molested very little in
his propaganda. No doubt the
frontier of hope that America pro-vided
for the Europeans helped to
stave off radical popular action
against Capitalism.
Our founding fathers had declar-ed
that man's right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness was
inalienable and that all men were
born to equality and possession of
those rights. They also declared
that government derives its proper
powers from the people and was
established to protect those basic
human rights and should be chang-ed
when they fail in the assign-ment.
Another early American
principle declared that the earth
belongs in usufruct to the living
generation.
This American plan was suf-ficiently
liberal and promising to
help Capitalism survive in appeal
to the discontented in the world
without destructive effect. When
Russian revolutionaries found in-spiration
in Marx, he appealed to
the discontented with his slogan
"workers of the world unite."
A large part of the human family
now lives under Communism and
we are fighting a war in Asia in a
costly effort to prevent the new
political system from spreading and
we watch uneasily insidious dis-loyality
in our own people while
radicals promote a menacing rest-lessness.
This restlessness is pro-nounced
among the young, many of
whom believe it their right and
duty to direct the economic and
political system under which we
live and build systems more to
their own liking.
I would not deny the right of the
new generation to work on sys-temic
changes. Long hair and
beards do not revolt me as I re-member
the head shaving cults of
the young males of my generation.
Some aspects of the youth move-ment
do seem to me a cause for
concern. The issue is no longer
primarily between the haves and
the have-nots. Our abundant cap-italist
production has been accom-panied
by governmental programs
which guarantee better distribution
of the benefits of labor and the
amazing productiveness we have de-veloped.
Some of the activists in
the youthful revolt are highly pri-vileged
under the present system
which they endanger. The concern
I feel is due in large part to the
alarming increase in the use of
narcotics and in the rioting against
MAY
THOMPSON
EVANS
CAPUS
WAYNICK
ESC QUARTERLY 13
all forms and procedures of discip-line.
"Every man holds his property
subject to the general right of the
community to regulate its use in
whatever degree the public wel-fare
may require it." That my
friends is a quotation from a Roose-velt—
not Franklin D., but Teddy.
It was Teddy who said it. Theodore
Roosevelt also wrote, "We stand
equally against government by
plutocracy and government by
mob." And here's another quotation
from Teddy. "No man is above the
law and no man is below it. We do
not ask any man's permission to re-quire
him to obey it. Obedience to
law is demanded as a right not
asked as a favor." That in my opin-ion
from the man who was Presi-dent
near the beginning of the 20th
century is Americanism under
who's banner we should stand firm.
Those who destroy law and order
open the way to dictatorship. Let
the new generation work as force-fully
as it will but let their drives
be kept within the bounds of dem-ocratic
action. I favor extending
the ballot to all 18 years of age and
older and full encouragement to
the restless young to express their
will, short of disorder and destruc-tiveness.
What will be your position in
the face of the increasing tendency
toward disorder or is that tendency
increasing? I've observed some
signs of a backlash among youth
itself against the disorder. The
young can correct their own course
of action to insure a safe change,
changes that will fall far short of
subjecting us to the tyranny over
the mind of man which would be
intolerable for those who love true
liberty.
What part will you play in so-ciety
in the years ahead? It's easy
to predict that it will be an impor-tant
role and it will take place in
a markedly changed world. Govern-ment
has been revolutionized in a
generation without civil war or
murderous purges. That under
which we live today is not very like
that of a generation ago and only
remotely like that under which we
lived at the turn of the century. On
rare occasions then, the power of
the federal government infringes
on our political and economic life
at the turn of the century. Federal
taxes were collected from few and a
revenue agent did little save inter-fere
with the conversion of some of
the farmer's corn into alcoholic
squeezings. Nobody looked to the
federal government for distribu-tion
of lodgings. Now who do you
know who doesn't receive some
kind of a check from the central
government?
We now live in a welfare state
and it is not likely to be restored
to the old conditions under which
everyone was forced by necessity
to find his own living. For better
or for worse, we are subject to the
irresistible pressure of public ex-pectations
and the burden of a new
awareness of social responsibility.
I quote from Galbraith's "A New
Industrial State." He writes that,
"The services of federal, state and
local governments now account for
between a fifth and a quarter of all
economic activity." A fifth and a
quarter. In 1929 it was about 8 per-cent.
This far exceeds the govern-ment
share in such an avowedly
socialist state as India, considerably
exceeds that in the anciently so-cialist
democratic kingdoms . of
Sweden and Norway, and is not
wholly incommensurate with that
of Poland, a communist country.
That represents the change which
forces you to face a changing
future.
The big issue is whether the re-bellious
of the present will pre-serve
the one vital ingredient in
state of affairs of those who cherish
personal liberty or will feed them-selves
and the rest of us into dicta-torship.
Can we successfully insist
on the use of the democratic pro-cess
and the changes of the years
ahead and preserve great material
and psychological values from fire
and pillage. Lloyd McCoy predicted
more than a century ago that the
fate of the American political state
would be destruction by the mob or
control by a dictator. Those of us
who are optimists think neither
should be the fate of a nation both
rich and generous but the present
is a period of definite crisis. Most
of you still have work that is in-volved
closely with the changing
conditions of years ahead and will
have much to do with the decision
and I wish you well.
I note by today's press, the
papers emphasize that a half mil-lion
Americans marched yesterday
in disabling protest against the
President and his policy but there
are 200+ million Americans and
while I do not ignore the danger of
a few, I still believe in the sanity
and soundness of the majority.
In conclusion, I have no way of
knowing whether I have said any-thing
here that will change your
thought or action as you enter this
troubled future. But whether I
have said anything to help you or
not, I do manifest a firm admiration
for you, my faith in you, my good
wishes to you as you struggle with
the future and I thank you for al-lowing
me to be here and to speak
to you today.
IF EMPLOYMENT SERVICE FAILS CHALLENGE
". . . it may live on as a mundane public
service, but it will have missed its destiny."
A Speech By MAY THOMPSON EVANS
Mr. Harris, General Waynick,
Colonel Kendall, Mr. Honeycutt, Mr.
Martin, Mr. Britt, Dr. Hayman, Dis-tinguished
Guests, and Fellow Mem-bers
of the International Associa-tion
of Personnel in Employment
Security:
I join General Waynick in ex-pressing
exhilaration over being
your guest at this 1969 IAPES An-nual
Institute. Thank you for
giving me the opportunity of being
here. I came to listen to you, as
well as to talk about "Employment
Security—Yesterday, Today, and
Tomorrow."
Ten of the most rewarding years
of my life were devoted to the Em-ployment
Service, State and Fed-eral.
I have retained a lively in-terest
in the Service as a profes-sional
field, and also in our Inter-national
Association.
Of many career activities, I rank
four as my best contributions to
my state; and each of these is re-lated
to you. They are:
. . . Helping to set up in North
Carolina the emergency organiza-tion
of the National Reemployment
Service (thanks to General Way-nick);
1
. . . Piloting through the 1935
General Assembly the enabling leg-islation
for our permanent state
employment service (thanks to all
the people in the NC-NRS at that
time);
. . . Initially setting up our state
service (thanks to Governor J. C. B.
Ehringhaus); and
. . . Initiating our state's first
merit system for the appointment
of personnel (thanks to Washington
for holding off this Wagner-Peyser
requirement until we could per-
14 ESC QUARTERLY
suade North Carolinians to take the
examination for placement on our
first recruitment roster; and thanks
to Duke University for devising our
system for us).
It was right here in Chapel Hill,
in the spring of 1944, that we of the
NC-NRS held our first state-wide,
in-service, educational institute, co-sponsored
by the University. ... I
have here a picture of that insti-tute
group: here is General Way-nick
. . . Mr. Campbell, our statis-tician,
who was a wizard with
figures . . . Mr. Honeycutt . . . Mrs.
Honeycutt . . . and perhaps others
who are here today. . . . These are,
of course, only a few of the 200 to
300 who worked fervently and
feverishly under General Waynick's
inspiration to set up the National
Reemployment Service in our state;
and who later worked with me in
setting up our permanent State
Employment Service.
My connection with our Associa-tion
began when we hosted the
Convention of IAPES at Grove
Park Inn, in Asheville, in 1935. By
that time, General Waynick had
left us, and I was serving the state
in the dual capacity of NC-NRS Di-rector
(appointed by Secretary of
Labor Frances Perkins) and Direc-tor
of the State Employment Serv-ice
(appointed by Governor Ehring-haus).
Some of you here today
helped with the Asheville Conven-tion.
. . . You recall that we held
our second NC educational institute
in conjunction with the Convention.
Subsequently, during my years
in Washington, through and follow-ing
World War II, I served as an
IAPES Vice-President; as Program
Chairman for the 1948 Convention,
in Windsor, Ontario; and as Presi-dent
of the District of Columbia
Chapter.
My professional experience has
been with the Employment Service
part of Employment Security. The
Federal-State Employment Service
was born in the crisis of mass un-employment
of the Great Depres-sion
of the early 30's It was redi-rected
in the early 40's to become
the operating arm of the War
Manpower Commission. It now
faces a third major crisis, brought
on by impending socio-economic
breakdown. I believe that survival
of the Employment Service as a
determining influence in our dem-ocracy
depends on another redirec-tion
today. I served through the in-itial
organization and the first re-direction,
and wish now that I were
still in harness to help with the
current challenge.
From the Service's inception and
during those earlier years, we were
highly relevant, very much "in",
wholly involved, and totally com-mitted.
With 189,000 registered un-employed
North Carolinians, all
seeking work, what else could we
be?
Our earliest beginnings were
motivated by HRD—human re-sources
development. Let me give
you an illustration of how early the
HRD policy was set.
In the very first month of NRS
(June 1933), General Waynick
gave me my first field assignment —to go up to a little community
beyond Brasstown. Some people up
there had sent word that they
needed work. I turned away as Mr.
Waynick spoke, so that he would
not see how flabbergasted I was by
an assignment to seek out some
families 350 miles away in the
high mountains, when we had
hundreds of unemployed, well ed-ucated
and able people, right on
the streets of Raleigh. But I got the
HRD policy in a flash.
Unable to find Brasstown on my
map, I nevertheless made my way
there after considerable difficult}^.
From there, on the first lap of the
journey to the community "be-yond",
I rode in a 2-wheel cart. On
the last lap, my local guide and I
rode mule-back—both of us on the
same mule. But I reached that
huddle of families who had sent
word to their state job-boss; and
we got them on jobs.
Those early days of NRS were
days of innocence as well as ingen-uity.
Many of us did not know a
bulldozer from a black jack, but we
matched a man and a bulldozer. We
did not know what a powder
monkey was; but we found one
—
and we did not go to the zoo in
search of him. If we had had a
Farm Labor Placement Service at
that time, however, we might well
have turned over to it an order
for an operator of a sheep's foot. A
Lorraine 75 sounded like an auto-matic
rifle, but after Joe Blythe
and I went to a construction site
and I climbed into the crane's cage,
we found a local, unemployed op-erator
who could compete with his
imported labor.
I can't resist sharing with you
at least one of my many colorful
moments with Contractor Blythe.
After a couple of long distance calls
about his labor crews and the law,
Mr. Blythe asked for a personal
conference. Many of you knew him
—stocky, burly, forceful. When he
came into my office, I left my desk
to greet him and to move to the con-ference
table. He stopped dead in
his tracks and, after recovering
from obvious astonishment, he
blurted: "My God! I thought you
were a great big woman."
Those were the days when we
learned by doing. We had no body
of professional and administrative
materials. We believed, however,
that we were building a long de-layed
institution, essential to our
democracy. We were determined
that its underpinnings would have
the full strength of our intelligence
and integrity. We had told our-selves
and all others that the Em-ployment
Service was not going to
be just another barnacle on the
ship of state. At the depth of the
Depression we had secured initial
funds from the General Assembly
to match fully the Wagner-Peyser
funds, and started out with the
gratifying sum of $150,000—so min-iscule
today. Our neighbor, Virginia,
however, was setting up a $15,000
Service. And our neighbor to the
south of us, South Carolina, had not
yet gone into action.
In our struggle to hand on to you
a heritage of strength and integrity,
we periodically had to "save" the
Service. I believe the most drama-tic
"saving" episode was the one
that posed the issue of whether we
would initiate our Service under
political or merit system appoint-ments.
This episode has never before
been told publicly. It occurred in
January, 1937. We were successful-ly
winding up a strenuous state-wide
campaign to persuade people
to take the merit system examina-tion,
so that our first appointment
roster would be an asset to the
Service. In order to conduct this
campaign, I had remained in Ral-eigh
for some months after my
husband had gone to Washington.
Since the year's campaign had
created sufficient enthusiasm for
the examination to assure merit
system appointments, I decided to
join my husband in Washington,
and so advised Governor Hoey one
morning. Before lunch he called
back to say he had a man to suc-ceed
me, who would be over at 8:30
the next morning for a bit of coach-ing
before the afternoon announce-ment.
I was a pricked balloon; the
entire world was a pricked balloon.
We had succeeded over the state in
establishing confidence in a new
merit system. I have never thought
so fast and furiously as I did on
that day. A flash came just before
closing time. At my request, staff
members stepped over to the pub-lic
library. Each returned with two
books approximately the size of
an unabridged dictionary. The sub-ject
didn't matter. The size did. The
books were piled high on the con-
ESC QUARTERLY 15
ference table—along with the slim
brochures we had on the Employ-ment
Service.
From 8:30 to 10:30 the following
morning, I explained to Mr. X that
the Employment Service was so
technical and scientific that he
would have to master, immediately,
volumes of complicated material.
He grew weary and left.
Governor Hoey called before
lunch to say that Mr. X had decided
he was more interested in some
other appointment.
In Washington, I was fortunate
in joining the War Manpower Com-mission
at its inception, as Deputy
Assistant to the Director of USES,
John Corson, who became also the
War Manpower Director of Agri-cultural
and Industrial Employ-ployment.
Our first responsibility
was to redirect the USES into the
operating arm of the War Man-power
Commission. Here again
were days, not so much of in-nocence
as of ingenuity and in-novation.
The crux of the war effort
being production, our national sur-vival
depended upon full utiliza-tion
of all manpower. You recall
that peace-time operation had been
geared to the refinement of place-ment—
the most qualified job appli-cant
for the job order. But the war
demanded redirection to conserva-tion
and control of manpower, the
breakdown of jobs and the train-ing
for new skills essential to the
war effort. There was for a while,
of course, a sense of frustration,
but we plunged into the task, as
you well remember. The record
shows Mission Accomplished.
After the war, I remained with
the USES until 1949, and helped re-convert
it to peace-time operation.
Now, twenty years later, in 1969,
the Employment Service faces an-other
major crisis, which may, I
believe, confront it with a greater
challenge that any it has yet
known.
My earlier reference to an im-pending
socio-economic breakdown
was intended to encompass in one
phrase the ills resulting from the
existence in our society of a size-able
segment of unemployed and
underemployed, less advantaged
people, and the accompanying mani-festations
of the so-called revolu-tion
of rising expectations. We hear
and talk much of the rural disad-vantaged,
the migration to the
cities, the ghettos, the hardcore un-employed,
the welfare mothers. Re-duced
to simpler terms, we are a
nation of haves and have-nots.
Those who are in the main-stream
of the economy have; those who are
not in the main-stream have not.
It is apparent to all that this situa-tion
cannot continue. The peace
and tranquility of the nation are at
stake. Unless we are somehow able
to bring these underprivileged peo-ple
into the main-stream of the eco-nomy,
we must pay the price of ris-ing
expectations in some other way.
The alternatives to employment
for these people are such eroding
expedients as a guaranteed wage,
the reverse income tax, or some
other measure equally alien to the
American tradition. Let us call
these programs what they are
—
subsidized unemployment.
The great challenge of these
times is to bring underprivileged
people into the orbit of employment
security—to help them secure pre-employment
preparation, to find for
them jobs they can hold and keep,
and through which they and their
children after them can strive to
reach their own rising expectations.
If private enterprise cannot or will
not provide sufficient jobs, and if
full employment remains our pol-icy,
then let us face the facts be-fore
it is too late: Uncle Sam must
be the employer of last resort, at
least until such time as the people
who are unemployed or underem-ployed
can be brought into the cur-rent
of private enterprise. If that
is the burden, let us accept it and
be on with the task, now—and as-sure
that it is employment, not a
dole.
If, 20 years ago, we in the United
States had taken seriously the
pledge of the Truman Administra-tion
to assure full employment for
the American people, and if we had
worked at it with unity of purpose,
we would not now be in the fix
we are in.
But, we have this national chal-lenge,
and it is on the very door-step
of Employment Security in
general, and of the Employment
Service in particular.
In order to meet this challenge,
the Employment Service will have
to accelerate its redirection and,
through innovation, redirect as
completely as it did to meet the
World War II crisis. In addition to
serving well qualified people who
seek jobs, the Service must give
most of its attention to ill-equipped
and unequipped people, many of
whom are not actively seeking jobs,
and who themselves have to be
sought out. Some states and cities
have already developed new con-cepts
which can help point the way.
As an old-timer sees it, the Em-ployment
Service must become the
community's central referral agency
not only for jobs and training, but
for pre-employment preparation,
and must also provide specialized
preparatory services on a case-work
basis. Furthermore, such new tools
as the computer must be put to full
use as new concepts are set into
full motion.
If you think today's socio-eco-nomic
challenge looms as a large
order, I must agree. I believe, how-ever,
that to "full employment"
there is no lasting alternative. If
the Employment Service fails to
rise to this challenge and capture
its opportunities, other agencies
will be expanded and created, as
has been done recently to direct
training and work for the lower
economic group. Thus, if the Em-ployment
Service fails to meet the
challege aggressively, it may live
on as a mundane public service, but
it will have missed its destiny.
I have faith that the Employment
Security system, with its tradition,
will embrace those now left outside,
and thus meet this most obstinate
challenge of our day.
1 The Federal Government in 1933
established the National Reemployment
Service (NRS). The Congress had ap-propriated
$3.3 billion in the National In-dustrial
Recovery Act, to create jobs. NRS
Directors, appointed to serve in each
state, organized state-wide systems with
county offices. The NRS was an em-ergency,
temporary service, to form a
nation-wide people-jobs net work until
states could secure legislation to estab-lish
permanent State Employment Serv-ices
affiliated with the United States Em-ployment
Services (USES — Wagner-
Peyser Act). The temporary NRS was
the forerunner of State Services, and was
discontinued after the Federal-State sys-tem
became a reality.
Mrs. May Thompson Evans
was the first director of the
North Carolina Employment
Service when it Avas establish-ed
in the mid 1930's.
A civil servant for over 25
years, she worked for the
United States Employment
Service, the Department of
Labor and the Department of
Health, Education and Wel-fare.
During World War II, Mrs.
Evans worked with the War
Manpower Commission, the
Office and Price Administra-tion
and Civil Defense. Cur-rently
retired, her most recent
employment was with the
President's Committee for
Consumer Interest in 1964.
Holder of a Masters degree
from Columbia University,
Mrs. Evans is an honorary
Phi Beta Kappa and holds an
honorary Doctor of Social
Services degree from the Uni-versity
of Richmond.
16 ESC QUARTERLY
AT FIRST PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICER SEMINAR
A Right to Know What Goes On
and a Right to Know What It Means
By ELMED OETTINGER
The proper study of mankind,
wrote Alexander Pope, is man. The
crux of that study, as playwrights,
poets, and philosophers long have
been aware, is the question, "Who
are we?" or, in terms of the in-dividual,
the question is "Who am
I?" If man is eternally in quest of
himself, if his ultimate goal has to
be to understand himself and his
environment to the utmost degree
that they can be understood and he
can understand them, to the end
that he can realize his own talents
and potential for service to man-kind
to the fullest, then any one
charged with conveying informa-tion
to the public has a challenge of
complex dimensions and a calling
of high seriousness.
Elmer Davis once wrote that
those disseminating the news were
in danger of becoming "mere trans-mission
belts for pretentious
phonies." He was writing at a time
when Senator Joseph McCarthy
was changing the number of com-munists
he alleged were in the
State Department almost daily. But
what Mr. Davis was saying es-sentially
was that most news in-volving
idea and substance has di-mensions
stretching far beyond its
Holder of AB and MA degrees
in Dramatic Arts, an LLB degree
in Law and a PhD degree in
English, Elmer R. Oettinger is
Assistant Director of the Insti-tute
of Government and an As-sociate
Professor of Public Law
and Government at the Univer-sity
of North Carolina in Chapel
Hill.
He edits the Institute of Gov-ernment's
magazine Popular
Government.
Oettinger instigated the semi-nar
for state and local govern-ment
information officers held at
the Institute of Government
January 5-6, and his comments
printed here on interpreting gov-ernment
news were given at the
end of the two day conference.
factual basis and thus to report
only the bare facts is to make one-dimensional
that which has many
dimensions. The practical results of
this sort of bare bones reporting
is to omit any semblance of inter-pretation
and to oversimplify to the
point that the reading, listening, or
viewing public is so little informed
as to have no sufficient basis for
understanding the true import of
the news and, consequently, for
forming opinions, evaluations, and
judgments based on the news.
It is my observation that the
spread of the radio and television
news commentary and the news-paper
column, together with edi-torial
pages, has helped bring added
dimensions to the reader, hearer,
and viewer. The tragedy is that so
large a portion of the population
appears not to read the editorial
pages or newspaper columns and
that a considerable number of list-eners
and viewers seem to pay
scant attention to commentaries
and documentaries. It is a sad fact
that not only is the power of an-alysis
not given in large degree to
many human beings but that the
power to appreciate and, therefore,
the desire to understand news in
A Naval officer during World
War II, he subsequently practic-ed
law in Wilson, his hometown,
and later joined the faculty at
UNC in the departments of Eng-lish,
Radio and Television, and
Motion Pictures.
Oettinger has written numer-ous
articles and several plays. He
is a member of the N. C. Press
Association, the State Bar, the
N. C. Bar Association, the Amer-ican
Association of University
Professors and is a Phi Beta
Kappa.
Oettinger is the founder and
director of the Institute of Gov-ernment's
Court Reporting and
Local Government Reporting
Seminars.
OETTINGER
depth is lacking in too many. The
challenge, it seems to me, is not to
inform or interpret less but to in-form
and interpret more—and more
creatively—in an effort to reach an
even larger portion of the popula-tion.
For an informed public pro-vides
the only basis upon which
democracy, even though represen-tative
democracy, can be assured
of functioning in the interest of
all.
But, you may say, "I don't write
editorials or columns or deliver
news commentaries or produce
documentaries. Sometimes the
media tries to seek to interpret the
information I provide them about
the workings of my agency. But
my job is to get out what use to be
called the straight dope [that's a
naughty word now]. My job is [in
more modern idiom] to tell it as it
is, to tell it straight." Well, the vir-tues
of reporting the news with
objectivity have been set forth too
often to require re-statement by
me. But you know, as well as I,
that objectivity in news often is re-translated
to mean bare bones facts,
over-simplification, and under-in-forming
the public. If your experi-ences
in any way parallel mine, I
believe you will tend to agree with
my conviction that true objectivity
in the news not only is extremely
difficult to obtain, but often impos-sible
to recognize or authenticate. I
do not wish to be misunderstood. I
am not saying that one must be
partisan in most aspects of his re-porting.
But I do say that informa-tion,
to be worthwhile, must be re-ported
in depth and breadth. And
I would point out to you the ob-vious—
that you are partisans by
ESC QUARTERLY 17
the very nature of your job and the
agency you represent. And that
raises some interesting questions,
not the least of which are: Do you
distort? DO you try to send out in-formation
straight? Do you gild
information to put the best face on
it from the standpoint of agency
viewpoint? Or do you interpret in-formation
so as to give the public
all the options to which it is en-titled
in its thinking? How do you
avoid being either a mere transmis-sion
belt or a conduit of agency-slanted
information? My guess is
that the danger is not so much that
you may deliberately slant the
basic news as that you select those
aspects which are calculated to in-gratiate
your agency or boss with
the public and achieve general sup-port
and approval for their ideas
and programs.
If this be true, I think it is time
for reassessing our public obliga-tion
in providing information. The
key to performance of public infor-mation
responsibilities in public
agencies must lie as much in
obligation to the public as to the
agency. That is to say, the public
not only has a right to know what
goes on in government but a right
to know what it means. To fulfill
that right you must arrange your
primary resources—words, sounds,
pictures—in vivid, useful, and
meaningful patterns. In other
words, there are certain basic re-quirements
which any able public
information officer or official must
have in our increasingly complex
world today. First, he (or she)
must have enough basic knowledge
and background information about
government to write about govern-ment.
That means, the person re-sponsible
for informing the public
must know both the nature, re-sponsibilities,
and goals of his own
department and agency and those
of all related departments or agen-cies.
He (or she) must know funda-mental
principles, philosophical and
practical, underlying our govern-ment
and its programs. He (or she)
must keep abreast of changes and
developments in government, in-cluding
new programs. And he (or
she) must understand government
in all its aspects in depth and in
detail. Otherwise information is re-tailed
routinely and in single di-mensional
form. If this be interpre-tation,
make the most of it!
Long age Marquis Childs wrote a
column in which he declared the
question was not whether govern-mental
news was managed but how
it was managed. My point is that it
should be managed, if at all, in the
(See OETTINGER, Page 38)
Government News
itAflbiN
By PETE IVEY
Director, UNC News Bureau, Chapel Hill
In the 1970 vocabulary of journal-ism,
two words
—
News Management
—carry a most frumious implica-tion.
"How Government News is Man-aged",
the original topic for this
panel, starts us off with the tacit
admission that news management
ought to be recommended. The title
might be softened or re-managed; to
read like this: "Resisting News
Management in Government" or
"Government News: Is it Managed?
To What Extent? And How Do We
Eradicate It—With DDT Spray or
Ban Roll-on Deodorant?"
But it does no good to dodge the
issue. What we are obliged to dis-cuss
here is not a juxtaposition of
emotion-laden words about govern-ment
news management and Credi-bility
Gaps, but the fundamental
question: are we hiding something
that ought not to be hid? Granted
that if democratic government is
to be sustained in order to assure
that the public be enlightened to
make its own decisions, are we
shedding candle power as we
should? And if we are not giving
enough illuminating what stands in
our way?
My thesis is that, in our peculiar
role as information officers, we are
IVEY
charged with responsibility to go
and get the news, to exercise per-suasion,
be guided by codes of eth-ics
in obtaining news, writing it
and presenting it to the news media
for dissemination to the public. We
are under obligation to be accurate
and honorable. We must identify
natural obstacles that block access
to the news, and strive constantly
to unclog the channels of com-munications,
so that flow of infor-mation
to North Carolina's five and
a half million people will be lub-ricated.
If this pipe reaming, chan-nel
clearing, unclogging, lubricating
task is News Management, make
the most of it.
Dean John Berry Adams of the
School of Journalism in the Univer-sity
of North Carolina said the big
issue is not management, but mis-management,
of the news. Speaking
at an Institute of Government
Forum here on May 19, 1969, Dean
Adams, said:
A simple dictum relevant in any
discussion of Access to Information
is this: 'Beware of human tend-encies;
they can do you in' . . . The
human tendency is found in all of
us . . . three types of humans are
particularly involved—o f f i c i a 1 s,
newsmen and the newsman audi-ence
. . . All are human . . . All
government officials have a vested
interest in apparent success in their
jobs . . . While, for some real suc-cess
is desirable, all will settle for
a public which thinks there is suc-cess
. . . When real success is being
attained, there is no problem. But
when officials try to create favor-able
public attitudes when success
is absent, danger signals should be
noted. Officials will try to manip-ulate
information about their ac-tivities
at all times, but especially
when they are image-building. This
manipulation in times of stress can
take three forms: 1. the release of
whatever good news is available, 2.
the suppression of bad news, 3. the
release of less than truthful infor-mation
deliberately designed to
shift attitudes from problems and
to gloss them over . . . Officials
will find and use power to try to
make sure their positions are not
destroyed. This human tendency of
18 ESC QUARTERLY
the official is something like the
animal tendency to protect its nest
—when outside threats occur, re-action
is immediate, and it can be
severe.
Dean Adams said the coming
struggle is over access to informa-tion.
Many of the public and much
of government officialdom attack
the news media and are hostile to
reporters, and perhaps to govern-ment
public information officers.
"We are being attacked because we
report violence," said Dean Adams,
"and because we are the carriers of
bad news." The Media are caught
between the Silent Majority who
say the news dispatches are rabble
rousing distortion, and the noisy
minority of violent people them-selves
who call the news media
tools of "The Establishment." Dr.
Adams warns we must realize that
"There is no strong element sup-porting
the news media in our so-ciety
today—except the news media
themselves." We have nowhere to
turn for help," said Dean Adams.
"We have to provide our own cure."
The newsman, said Dr. Adams,
must have access areas that were
heretofore neglected. He needs ac-cess
to the active minority. He re-quires
access to understanding of
the goals of that group. He needs
access to the minds of the reactor
—
those who will rebel against
change; those who want gradual
change; those who want revolution-ary
change.
Increased access to news will give
both the public and the power
structure leaders better understand-ing
about the forces struggling for
dominance in our society.
Manipulating the news could do
a disservice to our institutions and
to our State. We, as information of-ficers,
must help to excavate the
facts, to switch on the light in dark
places.
We should be represented in the
high-level conferences when any
policy is shaped that may subse-quently
be subject to public dis-closure;
if we are not there as par-ticipants,
or not represented, the
public relations effectiveness of our
departments and institutions is
thereby weakened, and the entire
institution sometimes placed in
danger. We are obliged to counsel
and convince our chiefs about the
hazards involved in the free play
of ideas in the public domain and
media, as well as the often greater
hazards in a hush-hush policy of
public information; and the even
more catastrophic hazards of an off-and-
on, inconsistent policy.
When we are caught in the
squeeze between managed news and
the goal of free access to informa-tion,
what should be our correct
posture? How enterprising and how
discreet should we be? Don't we
work for sincere and able admini-strators?
Don't they control our
pay? Do we not have prior loyalty to
them? Is it not true that they may
have broader perspective and deep-er
understanding and greater re-sponsibilities
than ive do? Yes, we
do. And they do. But they also have
a right to call upon our knowledge
and skills. They have a right to
command our services, not as yes
men, but as loyal and competent
communications specialists. We are
not serving them, nor our agencies
of government, nor the people of
the State properly when we fail to
take the initiative in accelerating
streams of information to the pub-lic.
If that is News Management, so
be it.
We in university information are
both fortunate and unfortunate. We
are unfortunate in that universi-ties
seem to be the main battle-ground
of the current social revolu-tion,
as we are war correspondents
on that field of conflict. But you
also have a stake in that in your
own departments of Government.
We are fortunate on campus, in
that there is a predisposition by
faculty and others to speak out for
fundamental liberties and to criti-cize
infringements on freedom of
speech, academic freedom, freedom
of the press. Yet, faculty members
are human, and many individuals
are victims of the tendency to be
secretive, abstruse or obscure. In
our own bureaucracies suspicious
gentlemen characterize news as
nothing but a sinister four letter
word.
We have an ace in the hole on
this university campus that you
can also profit by if you wish to
use it. This trump card is a writ-ten
statement of free access to in-formation,
a code of communica-tions
that serves as a yardstick for
seeking, getting and distribution
of information from the University
to the public. We can insist upon
principles and these principles are
respected.
What are these principles? They
are a part of a published code of
conduct in Chapel Hill. The official
University publication, The Record,
of the University states:
It is the policy and practice to
disseminate the news of the Uni-versity
without censorship. The
University adheres to the policy of
free access to information. This
means an open-door policy. Faculty
members, administrators and others
are urged to cooperate with mem-bers
of the news media, through the
News Bureau or directly in answer-ing
questions relating to activities
of the University. The frank and
uncensored access to the facts
—
whether or not they are favorable
to the University—gives confidence
in the forthright public relations
policy of the University.
It is helpful to have a published
policy statement. Impediments that
block our access to information are
not so difficult to overcome. How
effective is the policy, as stated?
Are the phrases high sounding but
toothless? Actually, the statement
is vital. Our work would be more
troublesome without it. The top of-
A. G. Pete Ivey is Director of
the News Bureau, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a
former newspaper editor, Nie-man
Fellow in Journalism of
Harvard University, and U. S.
Army public relations officer
during World War II.
A native of Rocky Mount, Ivey
is an alumnus of UNC with a
degree in journalism. He was a
newspaperman in Winston-Salem
from 1938 to 1954, except for the
Avar years and shortly after
—
working as a reporter, promotion
manager, columnist, editorial
writer and associate editor in
charge of the editorial page of
the Twin City Sentinel in Win-ston-
Salem. He was executive
editor of the Shelby Daily Star
in 1954-55.
During World War II, Ivey be-came
a public relations officer
for headquarters of Special Serv-ices
in Washington and New
York with the title of Chief of
Technical Information and the
rank of Captain.
He became Director of the
News Bureau in the University
of North Carolina in 1955.
Ivey is a member of the Amer-ican
College Public Relations As-sociation.
He is author of the
guidebook "The University and
Public News Media," and is a
member of Sigma Delta Chi
Journalism Fraternity. He is a
member of the Society of Nie-man
Fellows and was 1961 win-ner
of the Southern Regional
Education Board and National
Science Foundation award for
Distinguished Science Writing
and Interpretation. Ivey is editor
of The University Report, a news
sheet relating to the activities
of UNC.
He was a featured panelist at
the Institute of Government's
seminar for information officers
and spoke on "news manage-ment.''
ESC QUARTERLY 19
ficials of the University, from Presi-dent
Friday and Chancellor Sitter-son
to students and faculty have
defended and forwarded this prin-ciple.
So have the previous Presi-dents
and Chancellors. In a speech
eleven years ago to the North Caro-lina
Press Association meeting at
the annual Press Institute in
Chapel Hill, Chancellor William B.
Aycock re-affirmed the principle in
these words:
"We are fully aware that it is our
duty to share with the people,
through you and other media, the
work of the University. This in-cludes
our shortcomings and our
mistakes as well as our successes,
our hopes and our aspirations . . .
The only instruction by the admin-istration
to the News Bureau is to
find the facts, pass them on to you,
and let the chips fall where they
may."
Such confidence, such statement
of mission and assignment for the
News Bureau is at once gratifying
but also a bit awesome as our
bounded responsibility. It is as
though we have asked for freedom
and responsibility, and then it is
thrust upon us with the words, "All
right, you have asked for it. Now
do it, and do it right." It challenges
us to be honorable, to be ethical, to
be fair, to be accurate, to be a loyal
counselor as well as devil's advocate
and to walk where angels fear to
tread.
One key to opening a closed door
is a simple skeleton key that may
be called a Rule of Reason in Public
Information. If we grant that gov-ernments
of the people, by the peo-ple
and for the people are best
served by "open covenants openly
arrived at", then we should ask
that the first and initial response
to a request for information be this:
"Yes, of course. Let's see. Why not."
The Federal Government's Free-dom
of Information Act was passed
by the Congress in 1967. The law is
not always effective in giving free
access to information because of-ficials
can find loopholes in the
law to bottle up the news. But the
law is useful in providing better ac-cess
to public documents than ex-isted
before 1967. The guidelines ex-plaining
the law by Attorney Gen-eral
Ramsey Clark sets forth key
concerns of the act:
—that disclosure be the general
rule, not the exception. —that the burden be on the gov-ernment
to justify the withholding
of the document, not the person
who requests it. —that individuals improperly
denied access to documents have a
right to seek injunctive relief in
the courts.
The attorney general's statement
about the burden of justification
posits the main point. The reporter,
or the public information officer,
should not have to apologize for
asking the question, or explaining
his presumption in digging for
facts. Rather, the one who holds
the information ought to be the
one who must explain, and justify,
why hard-to-get information is be-ing
withheld.
A permissive regulation helps
him to overcome the innate human
instinct to dive into a secret.
We must appeal to man's higher
nature, developed over centuries of
civilization. We must give him
rules to work by that will promote
freedom of information and good
government.
Besides these general principles,
there are special techniques for ap-proaching
reluctant news sources.
We must first understand the
rationale, for executive sessions, for
off-the-record comments, for refus-ing
to give legitimate facts. Rea-sons
often given can be successfully
countered in the public interest: —Presence of reporters will in-hibit
the discussion; yet the pre-sence
of reporters may make the
discussion more responsible. —Publicity gives information that
is premature in its development;
yet doesn't the public have the
right to be in on the conception of
an idea and to follow the progress
—
long before the fait accompli? —Reporters and cameramen in-terfere
with the dignity of the oc-casion;
yet dignity may sometimes
have to be sacrificed for the sake
of affording the public the facts
about what's going on behind closed
doors. And dignity may, at times, be
only pomposity in disguise. —Executive sessions protect per-sonalities;
yet it is well known that
personalities have been attacked
and good names ruined by closed-door
speakers who derogate others
behind a cloak of privy meetings in
decision-making committees.
What is the difference between
necessary management of the news
and mismanagement of the news?
Often it may be the way in which
we carry out our assignments. We
manage the news when we:
1. Send out a release, sometimes
called a handout.
2. Call a press conference.
3. Answer questions put to us by
the press or broadcasters.
4. Notify media of impending
events which they may be interest-ed
in covering.
5. Call editorial writers and offer
them background.
6. Write clearly, in a way that
captures attention and informs.
7. Offer an exclusive.
8. Take a reporter to lunch or of-fer
him a drink or a cigar.
9. Speak to him off the record.
10. Exercise editorial judgment
in selecting what news goes out.
These are acceptable manifesta-tions
of news management.
We mismanage the news when
we:
1. Withhold essential information.
2. Tell a lie, or a half truth, or a
half lie.
3. Call a press conference and
have only a statement to make with
no opportunity to ask questions.
4. Play favorites among the news
media representatives.
5. Fail to notify the media when
big events are impending.
6. Plead with high brass of the
media for space, time, placement.
7. Encouraging sources say "no
comment".
8. Threatening a reporter, or go-ing
over his head.
9. Altering news stories to give
less than adequate information,
whether for purposes of abbrevia-tion
or for angling the news.
10. Fail to be sufficiently aggres-sive
in digging for news.
What is your own personal score
or report card for effectiveness in
handling your job as a government
public information officer? Check
off your reaction to these ques-tions:
A—Do your officials sometimes
hide news and make you the goat,
the cushion of non-communication
wherein you suppress news, delay
it, rather than expedite it? If so,
you are less than effective in your
job and of little service to your in-stitution
or department.
B—Do you participate in the in-ner
councils when policy is being
made that ultimately will be in the
public domain? If not, you are less
effective in your job than you ought
to be, and you are not serving your
department to the maximum desir-able
degree.
C—Do you know more about your
agency or institution than anyone
else? If not, you are less effective
than you should be.
D—Would you equivocate, or tell
a lie, to your boss or to the press
in order to protect yourself or your
institution from criticism? If so,
you misunderstand the principles
and ethical standards by which you
should work.
E—Is your batting average for
news published and broadcast pret-ty
good? Do the editors say you're
giving them too much? Do they
have confidence in vour veracity?
(See IVEY, Page 25)
20 ESC QUARTERLY
"The belief that news springs
from some mysterious pure
and undefiled source, and can
be caught in its pristine state
by a knightly journalist, is a
myth right out of a journalistic
Camelot."
"The First Amendment presup-poses
that right conclusions
are more likely to be gathered
out of a multitude of tongues
than through any kind of au-thoritative
selection. To many
this is, and always will be,
folly; but we have staked upon
it our all."
From The Book
EFFECTIVE
PUBLIC RELATIONS
written by
Scott Cutlip
and
Allan Center
I his tussle for men's minds be-comes,
in the final analysis, a battle
of communication and censorship
. . . Just as communication repre-sents
a positive effort to change or
conserve existing opinions through
the transmission to understandable
symbols, censorship represents a
negative effort to influence opin-ions
by suppression of what per-sons
see, read, or hear. Opinions
can be affected by what one does
not know as much as by what he
does know. Opinions based on no
facts, part of the facts, or all of the
facts are likely to be quite different.
Thus the tool of censorship is used
to create or obliterate an individ-ual's
opinions. This is artificial cen-sorship.
But there is another kind
of censorship—natural censorship
effected by the barriers of physical,
psychological, and semantic dis-tance
and difference. Artificial cen-sorship
is deliberately invoked for
a definite purpose. Natural censor-ship
derives spontaneously from
the environment or organized so-ciety.
Arthur Krock, chief Washington
correspondent for the New York
Times for many years, put his fing-er
on the nub of this conflict be-tween
the press and the govern-ment
publicist when he wrote:
Every American government is
in a contest with the newspapers
as to which shall be the first to
reveal plans and actions. The gov-ernment—
being composed of po-liticians
anxious to win public
favor and succeed themselves
—
naturally wants to make its own
announcements. It wants to dish
up its record with the most palat-able
sauces of publicity because it
depends for ratification and ap-proval
on public opinion and on
the Congress which supposedly,
reflects that.
The newspapers, on the other
hand, have precisely the opposite
duty. Their function is to keep
the public constantly informed of
trends and projects leading to
plans and acts so that the demo-cratic
processes may be exercised
to the full and nothing momen-tous
be swiftly consummated on
political action before the public
can realize what is going on, and
why and wherefore . . . All ad-ministrations
at Washington
within recent memory have con-stantly
set guards over the sour-ces
of news . . . All politicians re-sent
the freedom of the press
when events are going against
them.
NEWS MANAGEMENT IN
GOVERNMENT
(Salient Thought on the Subject
from Government and Media Ob-servers)
The Government and the Press,
by Louis M. Lyons, in Reporting
the News
There is a natural conflict of in-terest
between government and the
press; any administration seeks to
put its best foot forward in the
public view, and the press insists
on uncovering both feet. In war the
government asserts the right of
censorship. But cold war and
atomic secrecy imposed an era of
security, classification and execu-tive
order which put varying de-grees
of restraint on the "full dis-closure"
which the press tradition-ally
holds as its function. The gov-ernment
handling of the Cuban
crisis of October 1962 brought to a
head the issue of what correspon-dents
had come to criticize as "man-agement"
of the news.
Clark R. Mollenhoff*—"Managing
the News," Harold Cross Memorial
Lecture, 1962
The Cuban crisis resulted in one
of the most dramatic examples of
the high-level handout. For several
days, our knowledge and our cover-age
were largely limited to the facts
that were fed to us through the
Pentagon, the State department and
the White House . . . Assistant Sec-retary
of Defense Arthur Sylvester
frankly admitted that the Kennedy
administration engaged in almost
total management of the news in
those days of crisis . . . (Many edi-tors
feel) that the Sylvester direc-tive
will have the potential for
shutting off legitimate dissent on
policy matters that have nothing to
do with national security . . . Are
we now to assume that we have
finally found that infallible team
composed of men who will know
instinctively what is best for us . . .
It is certainly handout collecting
of the worst kind when reporters
or editorial writers accept errone-ous
conclusions that are whispered
by an administration.
*Mr. Mollenhoff, formerly a cor-respondent
for the Cowles public-ations
now is a special press coun-sel
adviser to President Richard
ESC QUARTERLY 21
Nixon. Following the President's
speech on his Vietnam Policy Nov.
3, 1969, and subsequent criticism of
television and the press for an-alysis
remarks made following the
President's speech, Mollenhoff said
that Vice President Agnew's speech
critical of the media was developed
by various White House aides." Mr.
Mollenhoff added: "if you are ask-ing
me 'does it reflect the Admin-istration's
views', the evidence is
abundant that it does."
Richard Dudmon of the St. Louis
Post Dispatch—"P.I.O.: Natural
Enemy"
Some of the complaints about
managed news are by reporters
who seem to hold the naive belief
that government Public Informa-tion
Officers have the job of pro-viding
information to the press.
Actually, their work is to promote
the good and conceal the bad and
put the best possible face on all
news concerning their agency.
They are natural enemies of news-papermen,
and any other assump-tion
is a dangerous delusion.
John L. Steele—Time Magazine
Bureau Chief, Washington, D. C.
"Look at the Product"
There is entirely too much wail-ing
at the wall on the subject of
press freedom and the so-called
"management" of the news. I am
disturbed lest newsmen become so
obsessed with this subject that they
forget their own jobs, that of "man-aging"
to tell the news in a mean-ingful
way. I have found that gov-ernmental
news policies have not
inhibited us to any great degree,
and I find important sources some-what
more available than at certain
times in the past.
Julius Duscha—The Washington
Post—"Hard, Unglamorous Work"
It has always been the job of pub-lic
relations men, whether they
work for the government or for
private industry, to manage the
news. I think Washington needs
fewer reporters who go around
bleating about the management of
the news and more reporters who
are willing to do the hard, unglam-orous
work of digging out the news.
Despite all of the reporters who are
in Washington, the city is actually
poorly covered. The reporters tend
to swarm to the most glamorous as-signments
. . . There is little day
to day coverage . . . and even the
coverage of the big stories often
consists of duplicating stories re-gurgitating
the obvious.
David J. Kraslow
—
Los Angeles
Times—"National Security Fibs"
It is one thing to speak the magic
words, "national security", and then
tell the citizens nothing. It is quite
another to tell them something ain't
so, when you know it is so. And
then, when what happened becomes
painfully obvious, you explain you
had to fib for the sake of national
security. The "you", of course, is
the national government, or any
agency or official thereof.
We ought to be raising hell about
doctored news, not managed news
... If it's all right for government
to lie sometimes, the students ask,
how can the people know when the
government is not lying? ... I
might say that the presidential
press conference can be a most use-ful
method of helping to keep an
administration honest in its hand-ling
of news.
John J. Lindsay
—
Newsweek—
"No Problem for the Real Report-er"
Those who are content with hand-out
reporting are those who bleat
the loudest when they get their ears
pinned back by enterprisers. Man-agement
of the news is going to be
with us forever. I think there is
less of it now than four years ago.
Judge Learned Hand—U.S. vs.
Associated Press
The First Amendment presup-poses
that right conclusions are
more likely to be gathered out of
a multitude of tongues than
through any kind of authoratative
selection. To many this is, and al-ways
will be, folly; but we have
staked upon it our all.
John Hohenberg — Columbia
School of Journalism—in "The
News Media"
"Credibility gap," like its fore-runner,
"news management" (has
become) a part of the American
idiom . . . All Presidents and most
Secretaries of State have managed
the news, some skillfully and others
poorly ... In the case of three
Presidents . . . Cleveland, Wilson
and Franklin D. Roosevelt . . .
serious illnesses were deliberately
concealed from the public . . . There
are many in government who neith-er
understand the function of the
news media nor care to risk talk-ing
with correspondents even when
they are authorized to do so . . .
news management is a legitimate
and often a necessary part of the
orderly processes of government.
The belief that news springs from
some mysteriously pure and unde-filed
source, and can be caught in
its pristine state by a knightly
journalist, is a myth right out of a
journalistic Camelot.
Dean John Berry Adams, UNC
School of Journalism—"Access to
News"
Access will soon be a problem
far beyond the present concern. The
future of this country will depend
on the extent to which newsmen
adapt to the news needs. Newsmen
lead public opinion—or they can . . .
We (of the news media) are being
raked over the coals because we re-port
violence. We, in fact, are being
charged with causing violence. We
badly need to re-educate the Amer-ican
people about what a press is
supposed to be—and in a real sense,
we have to re-educate ourselves. We
are being attacked because we re-port
violence—we are the carriers
of bad news. The silent—now not
so silent—are calling us rabble
rousers—they say our coverage is
distorted, unfair, and too pleasing
to the violent minorities . . . The
violent are calling us tools of the
establishment, advocates of status-quoism
. . . There is no strong ele-ment
supporting the news media in
our society today—except the media
themselves. We have nowhere to
turn for help. We have to provide
our own cure . . . We must expand
our horizon. I don't mean we should
print only good news. That is worse
than printing only bad news. A
newsman should spot trends and
cover them, spot injustices and re-port
it . . . The newsman needs to
have access to areas previously of
no concern—to the active minority
—access to understanding of the
goals of that group. He needs access
to the minds of the reactor—those
who will rebel against change
those who want gradual change
—
those who want revolutionary
change.
Report No. 186, Columbia School
of Journalism—The Access to Fed-eral
Records Law
The Freedom of Information Act
(1967) provides that every agency
shall publish in the Federal Reg-ister
for the guidance of the public
information concerning where rec-ords
can be seen, from whom they
are to be obtained, and the condi-tions
under which they may be in-spected.
Agency records shall be
made available promptly upon re-quest
... If any agency or employee
refuses access to records not except-ed
in the statutes, the agency may
be enjoined by the U.S. District
Court fr